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

by David Protess (Author), Rob Warden (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
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

From Publishers Weekly
In this expose of an astonishing case of legal incompetence, Protess, a professor of journalism and urban affairs at Northwestern University, and Warden, a Chicago freelance investigative journalist, detail the inept police work, perjured testimony and mistakes of defense attorneys that combined to convict four African American males of crimes they did not commit. Childhood friends who grew up in East Chicago, the "Ford Heights Four"?Dennis Williams, Kenny Adams, Willie Rainge and Verneal Jimerson?were arrested and found guilty of the 1978 double rape and murder of a white couple. Warden, receiving a letter in 1982 from Williams on death row, became persuaded that the convictions were based on tainted evidence and published an article on the case in Chicago Lawyer. Appeals, retrials and other strategies failed to free the men until Protess joined the struggle with three of his students and a team of volunteer lawyers. Their investigation of police files, the use of new forensic technologies and interviews with those connected with the case helped lead to the arrests of the real killers. In 1996 the Ford Heights Four were released. Notwithstanding their dramatic portrayal of a heroic effort, against all odds, to rectify the failures of the justice system, some troubling errors in the writers' account lead one to wonder if all their facts have been thoroughly checked.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 258 pages
• Publisher: Hyperion Books; 1st edition (August 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786862947
• ISBN-13: 978-0786862948
• Product Dimensions: 9.7 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (38 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #660,269 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hope everyone reads it, January 15, 1999

By	David C N Swanson (Charlottesville VA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book tells the story of four men who were framed by police and prosecutors and put in prison and on death row for eighteen years. Although you know before reading the book that the men were eventually exonerated, the book grips you.

It's a courageous, honest, and intelligent story of prosecutorial corruption and defense lawyers' almost superhuman incompetence. Despite the paranoia that events like these create in victims of injustice and the cynicism they foster in do-gooders, this should be received as a hopeful book, proof that injustice is not invincible.

But hope should not become complacency. As the authors write:

"There's no way to know how many wrongful convictions there are, but even if the error rate in the criminal justice system were only one percent there'd be more than ten thousand cases in the country."

The police in this case had a standard procedure of keeping two files, one of them secret. The prosecutors had sophisticated systems in place for stifling the truth. These facts suggest an "error rate" potentially higher than one percent.

Citing a book by Michael Radelet, the authors report that there have been 421 Americans this century convicted of capital crimes and later proved innocent. In 23 of these cases the proof came too late.

In this case, the police had good leads on the actual criminals. These were kept quiet because of political connections until the wrong men had been publicly accused. After they had accused four men, prosecutors did not want to switch to accusing different ones just because the new ones looked like they might really be guilty. So the evidence was buried.

As a result, four families were ruined, and at least one of the actual criminals committed at least one more murder, thus destroying more lives. And, of course, courts were tied up with endless hours of ridiculously pointless work, while trust and relations between citizens and police was horribly damaged.

No police officers or prosecutors were charged with any crimes in this matter. Perhaps this book is an argument that they should be. Or perhaps it is an argument against the bizarre U.S. system of ELECTING prosecutors. On the last page of the book, one of the four victims of this outrage proposes five changes to the current system:

"abolishing capital punishment, allowing petitions for new trials to be presented any time evidence of innocence is discovered (a right that has been severely curtailed by the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1996), repealing legislation intended to speed up capital appeals, raising the standards and reducing the caseloads of defense lawyers working at public expense, and ensuring every defendant's right to test possible DNA evidence"

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars An inspiring tale poorly told, September 22, 1999

By	Julian P Killingley (Wakefield, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews

I have mixed feelings about this book. I am always looking out for clear accounts of miscarriages of justice to support one of my courses. Book reviews below suggested that A Promise of Justice might be just the thing.

The factual tale that Protess and Warden tell is a good one. It contains all the classic indications of a major miscarriage of justice. It is also a refreshing twist to find that justice is eventually achieved through the efforts of non-lawyers. On that basis it does make it onto my recommended reading list for my students - but only just.

My gripe with this book is that the authors do not make the best of their material. More than one reviewer has mentioned it in the same breath as Jonathan Harr's A Civil Action. That really is misleading - this book is simply not in the same league as that.

I see two problems with the way the authors tell their tale. First, they never forget they are journalists - and the book reads like a piece of journalism rather than an analytical account of a miscarriage of justice. It feels like something out of a newspaper supplement. Journalists can write excellent book-length accounts of miscarriage of justice cases - it is a pity that Protess and Warden did not copy Pete Earley's style in Circumstantial Evidence or John Tucker's style in May God Have Mercy.

The second problem is that Protess and Warden were participants in the events. I found their attempt to write an objective account of what they did, particularly their adoption of the third person rather than the first person voice, slightly jarred with me. I also found the frequent "cliff hanger" ends to chapters rather forced.

It is plain from other reviews on this site that this is not a problem for most readers. I do not wish to detract in any way from the role the authors played in correcting a grievous wrong done to the defendants.However, the book leaves me with a feeling that the treatment of the case is a rather lightweight one that adheres a little too strongly to the journalistic human interest approach to a situation. This is reflected in the book's length - the case is at least as complicated as that of Johnny McMillian in Circumstantial Evidence or of Roger Coleman in May God Have Mercy yet it is a much shorter book.

I can understand why the authors wished to tell their own story but its telling - and the full extent of the miscarriage of justice in this case - would have been better told by others. Nevertheless, as an expose of empty promises and prosecutorial misconduct it is an excellent exemplar.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Powerful Enough to Make Angels Weep, December 3, 1998

By A Customer

This book is full of compassion, yet it can fairly be described as dispassionate. If that seems like a contradiction, it's only because the facts speak so eloquently and so strongly all by themselves. I read it and wept. The story is powerful enough, in the dispassionate telling, to make angels weep.