Hi, I'm Josie Duffy Rice, and this is the Justice in America book bonus.

Here's State Attorney Aramis Ayala.

She's the head prosecutor for the Ninth Judicial Circuit Court of Florida, which covers Orlando and the surrounding areas, and she's the first black state

attorney in the history of Florida.

Thank you so much, state attorney Ayala, for joining us.

Not a problem, glad to do it.

Can you tell us any books that you've read in the past or are currently reading that have influenced your view on criminal justice or have changed the way you think about the system?

So, um, I love reading. I've obviously read Just Mercy, you know, I've obviously read just mercy you know I've read the

Groveland forward devil in the grove is what it's actually called by

Gilbert King those are books that I have read but they are firsthand accounts you know

they're really amazing they're raw they're factual

and the new Jim Crow that's where Michelle Alexander goes into this this fair balance of looking at, you know, scholarship as well as the actual factual

philosophical notes.

I prefer to strike that balance.

I never stop reading the American Bar Association all of their journals their

task force their resolutions even when I started with the whole pursuit of

exploring factual information as it relates to the death penalty I looked a lot at their research and their

task force, their information, the lack of deterrent, all of that. So I really enjoy

articles, but I do enjoy books like, you know, those that I've named. What I will say is that mid-career I

decided to go back and get my master's in criminal justice. This is post-Bachelors

and post-J-D and two books that I keep on my bookshelf at all time are the rich get richer and the poor get

prison and that is a book that keeps me grounded. I also look at justice blind and it has a question mark after the title.

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