Woman on Trial

Tony Barclay is a retired juvenile corrections probation officer and a
former public-health research associate at the University of Toronto.

This book is Bembenek’s account of her life, her trial, and her escape
to Canada. It makes a compelling case for her wrongful conviction for
murder. At the very least, it suggests that her trial was badly
conducted, and that the jury’s verdict ignored the serious doubt
raised by much of the most important evidence submitted. Clearly this
book is a more serious study than its cover suggests.

Bembenek is not a wholly likable person: she is immature and impulsive;
her way of life and her judgment of people were often questionable. This
made her case a classic of its kind in that she was tried by the media
long before she went to court. She was also a victim of the Milwaukee
police department, which she had offended through her publicly voiced
criticisms.

The most compelling part of this book is Bembenek’s articulate yet
horrifying account of her treatment in the various detention facilities
and prisons in which she lived for some 10 years. Toronto’s West
Detention Facility, in particular, is criticized for its callous
treatment of inmates.

In telling her story, Bembenek condemns not only injustices in the
prison system and the courts, but, inadvertently, also a life that was
self-centred and shallow. Had she been allowed to continue her career as
a police officer, she might have ended up like so many
others—disliking a corrupt system but going along with it.