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This autobiographical story of the author’s wrongful conviction of murder before his eighteenth birthday and the decades-long struggle to prove his innocence and reclaim his life and his freedom is told in excruciating honesty in this memoir. Readers will be taken through the process by which prosecutors and the police coerced a confession, withheld evidence, and denied claims for appeals or paroles based on nothing more than the severity of the crime. This is an honest and unflinching look at the criminal justice system’s failings both before and after the introduction of DNA-based evidence, told from someone who was forced to endure some of the most frightening and lonesome conditions imaginable while maintaining a position of innocence and refusing to compromise upon that to obtain leniency.
After making headlines, this story may even be familiar to some readers who have an eye and an ear for criminal justice or true crime. However, it has never been told with this much personal detail and introspection. Hearing this difficult journey told through the person who was forced to walk it is powerful, poignant, and heartbreaking. The rich level of storytelling and honesty creates a full, no-holds-barred picture of how it can feel to be ignored and even attacked by those in power and adds to the devastating pain of even just being exposed to the reality of errant incarceration. This is a necessary and striking account that can be hard to swallow even by proxy, but it is written powerfully and with an emotional conveyance that underlines every single word and makes an impression that is impossible to forget.
RECOMMENDED by the US Review