Eye-Opening Books About Wrongful Incarceration

From Emmy Award–winning veteran news producer Dan Slepian comes The Sing Sing Files, a harrowing new narrative about navigating our court and prison systems in pursuit of true justice. The NBC Dateline producer draws on his expert investigative journalism skills to chronicle a real-life account of wrongful conviction in New York, which begins in 1990 with a tip from a detective about a pair of men imprisoned for a crime they didn’t commit. Slepian brings readers along for an eye-opening 20-year odyssey through prisons, courtrooms, police stations, and New York neighborhoods that eventually leads to freedom for six innocent men. Hailed by Kirkus as a “gripping, highly effective true-crime synthesis,” The Sing Sing Files lays bare the injustices wrought by America’s criminal justice system.  

Named one of the most influential books of the decade by CNN, along with garnering a slew of other accolades, Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy is a personal account of a lawyer’s career-long fight for justice and an indictment of the role racism and poverty play in our court system. As a young, idealistic lawyer, Stevenson founded his legal practice, the Equal Justice Initiative, intending to fight for the rights of marginalized individuals. The memoir shifts between two narratives. The first documents Stevenson’s broader career fighting for reforms such as abolishing mandatory life sentences without parole for minors. The second narrative, which was adapted into an acclaimed 2019 film starring Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Foxx, chronicles one of Stevenson’s first cases: He was hired to work to overturn the wrongful murder conviction of Walter McMillian, a Black man who was given a death sentence in 1980s Alabama for a crime he didn’t commit.

You know this case must mean a great deal to John Grisham, as it’s the bestselling legal thriller author’s sole work of nonfiction. The Innocent Man tells the story of Ronald Williamson, a once-promising baseball player who was wrongfully convicted of murder and put on death row, then was exonerated by the Innocence Project in 1999. Grisham’s account describes the recklessness with which the police and district attorney handled the investigation and also the lasting trauma of Williamson’s wrongful incarceration. Throughout the book, Grisham highlights similar cases in his mission to address corruption and abuse in the United States criminal justice system.    

Two memoirs in one, Picking Cotton is a New York Times bestseller that questions the extent to which the law relies on eye-witness testimony and speaks to our astonishing capacity for forgiveness and grace. Traumatized and shaken after being raped at knifepoint in her own home, Jennifer Thompson-Cannino mistakenly identified Ronald Cotton as her attacker, ultimately leading to his wrongful incarceration for more than a decade. After being exonerated through DNA evidence 11 years later, Ronald forged an inspiring friendship with Jennifer based on shared tragedy and a drive to speak up for the wrongs perpetrated by faulty policing and courtroom processes. 

A finalist for both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, Solitary is the heart-wrenching memoir of Albert Woodfox, a man who spent more than four decades in solitary confinement for a crime he didn’t commit before finally being released in 2016. That Woodfox survived such a traumatic ordeal at all is staggering — that he emerged with the capacity to produce this profoundly moving reflection and a rousing call to action against the inhumanity of solitary confinement makes it essential reading. “Solitary is not simply an indictment of the cruelties, absurdities, and hypocrisies of the criminal justice system, it is a call to conscience for all who have allowed these acts to be done in our name” (Jelani Cobb, author of The Substance of Hope).

The Innocence Project plays a significant role in many of the other works on this list, and Junk Science and the American Criminal Justice System comes from one of the organization’s lead attorneys. M. Chris Fabricant draws on three case studies to dismantle the myths and misconceptions surrounding forensics. While pop culture programming and public relations have created an air of rock-solid infallibility around the science of crime scene investigations, Fabricant explains how this assumption is not only misguided but has destroyed lives by sending innocent people away for crimes they didn’t commit. Enthrallingly told and meticulously reported, this insider’s view of forensic science will have you rethinking everything you thought you knew about supposed open-and-shut cases.

Valena Beety began her career as a federal prosecutor to help protect victims, especially women caught in cycles of violence. Soon, she shifted her focus to help free wrongfully accused people through the Innocence Project. Manifesting Justice speaks to Beety’s goal through the story of Leigh Stubbs, a queer Mississippi woman convicted of a brutal crime she didn’t commit. Many of the books on our list shine a much-needed light on racism within the justice system. This book meaningfully adds to the conversation by examining issues of sexuality and gender, and it highlights how even those who aren’t wrongfully convicted are often overcharged, oversentenced, and mistreated. 

Just Mercy author and civil rights attorney Bryan Stevenson makes an appearance in this first-person account of successful exoneration; he both wrote the forward and played an integral role in freeing Anthony Ray Hinton in 2015 after Hinton had spent 27 years behind bars. As a poor Black man in Alabama, Hinton had little recourse when he was convicted of a murder he didn’t commit. After languishing in prison for years, Hinton decided to spend his time on death row steeling his spirit and the spirits of those around him. Upon being released after nearly three decades of wrongful incarceration, he penned The Sun Does Shine, a stunning account of finding hope and humor under the most unimaginable circumstances. 

Tulia recounts the story of 39 residents of a small town in Texas charged with dealing cocaine in the summer of 1999. Those arrested, nearly all of them Black, were sentenced based on the flimsy testimony of one police officer. While Nate Blakeslee’s narrative vividly chronicles the town, the arrests, and the fight to overturn the convictions, it also offers a shocking look at how a broken, racist system can operate with impunity in rural America, upending the lives of its citizens.

Jarrett Adams has experienced the justice system both as a wrongfully incarcerated prisoner and later as a lawyer. This account of his dual experiences gives readers a look inside the injustices created by our legal institutions. In Redeeming Justice, he recounts how after being convicted by an all-white jury at 17, Adams spent a decade fighting for his freedom through his own legal study and the help of the Wisconsin Innocence Project. But he didn’t stop there: Upon his release, he earned a law degree, with the hopes of helping those who faced similar injustices, and ultimately becoming the first exoneree ever hired as a lawyer by the New York Innocence Project. 

Sarah Burns, daughter of the acclaimed documentarian Ken Burns, started working on her account of the Central Park Five — the five Black and Latino teenagers wrongfully convicted of raping and assaulting a jogger in 1989 — when she was a college student. The Central Park Five, first published in 2011, is a comprehensive account of the case and the 2002 exoneration of the five men. In it, Burns documents in compelling detail the facts of their conviction and exoneration. The book also delves into the deeply entrenched racial and class divides in New York City and illustrates how these divisions infect and warp the institutions that are designed to protect us.