A Promise of Justice: The Eighteen-Year Fight to Save Four Innocent Men - Hardcover

In 1978, a young white couple was abducted at gunpoint from a 24-hour filling station in Homewood, Illinois, and taken to a predominantly black neighborhood outside of Chicago. They were forced into an abandoned, decayed townhouse where the woman was raped repeatedly; shortly thereafter, both were dead from multiple gunshot wounds. The investigation seemed open-and-shut. An eyewitness described two of the suspects running from the townhouse, one with a gun in his hand. Another witness claimed to hear two of the suspects bragging about the murders. Most damning of all, the girlfriend of one of the suspects claimed she was present in the townhouse; later, she claimed, she witnessed the actual murders. Four men--Dennis Williams, Verneal Jimerson, Willie Rainge, and Kenny Adams--were ultimately convicted, and two of them sentenced to death.

Several years later, Rob Warden, the editor of a Chicago law review journal, noticed irregularities in the case and asked his friend David Protess, a Northwestern University journalism professor, to get involved. The truth came out grudgingly, after years of reinvestigation, but when it did, it revealed one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in American legal history, a classic "rush to judgment" that ultimately cost four men a collective 65 years in prison. Protess and Warden, writing in the third person, demonstrate conclusively (with assistance from many helpers) that the four men were innocent. This is a spellbinding, powerful account of undeniable negligence and arrogance resulting from the local district attorney's vainglorious need to have the double murder solved quickly, at all costs. It's also a strong reminder of the power of detail-oriented investigative journalism, even in a sound-bite age. --Tjames Madison

A chilling cautionary tale that says reams about the true state of justice in America. Those who think racism and corruption are simply the stuff of prime-time TV will think twice after reading Protess and Warden's latest journalistic endeavor. Here the coauthors of the Edgar-nominated Gone in the Night: The Dowaliby Family's Encounter with Murder and the Law (1994) chronicle the depressing story of four African-American men who spend a combined total of 64 years in Illinois prisons (two on death row) for a crime they did not commit, then are finally set free. Larry Lionberg and Carol Schmal were a young white Chicago couple engaged to be married when they were abducted in 1978 from a filling station after a botched robbery. Lionberg was executed. Schmal was shot in the head after being gang-raped by the robbers. Dennis Williams, Kenny Adams, Willie Rainge, and Verneal Jimerson were picked up for the crime shortly after and eventually were found guilty, despite their repeated pleas of innocence, alibis from their mothers, and a lack of physical evidence. Protess (Journalism and Urban Affairs/Northwestern Univ.) and Warden (former publisher of the Chicago Lawyer) learn of the men's plight after Williams, aware of their interest in miscarriages of justice, forwards to them some of the details behind his frame-up. And what details they are: inept defense lawyers, perjured testimony, police cover-ups. Protess and Warden take on the case, not only proving the men's innocence but also solving the crime. Written as if it were unfolding at this moment, the tale is made all the more spellbinding by the fact that such misfortune could happen anywhere. A frightening look at the ineptitude and racism that too often skew the justice system. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.