SOURCE: Posner, Richard A. “In the Fraud Archives.” New Republic 220, no. 16 (19 April 1999): 29-34.

In the following review, Posner, a U.S. Chief Justice, outlines what he perceives as flaws in The Crime of Sheila McGough. Posner disapproves of Malcolm's lenient attitude toward McGough's complicity in the crimes carried out with Bob Bailes.

In 1990, a federal jury convicted Sheila McGough, a criminal defense lawyer in Alexandria, Virginia, of fraud, perjury, witness intimidation, and related crimes. She was sentenced to three years in prison. Her conviction and her sentence were affirmed, and her subsequent motion for a new trial on the basis of newly discovered evidence was denied, and that denial was also affirmed. After her release from prison, she wrote to the journalist Janet Malcolm, claiming that she had been framed because her pertinacious efforts to defend her clients had irritated federal prosecutors and judges. Malcolm investigated the matter...