A short Summary:
Chapter 1 ~ 3:
Sets up the story of Walter McMillian, whose interracial extra-marital affair with a young white woman got himself targeted as a suspect of a murder of white young woman in an laundry store.
Also, his encountered with an old man in a wheel chair encouraged him to keep “Beating the drum of justice.”
Walter ended up in the death row.
Chapter 4: Several death row cases were described including Horace Dunkins, a mildly retarded man, whose execution took a second jolt because of wrongly placed electrodes. Also a PTSD veteran who unintentionally killed a child to win the heart of his girl friend when the child picked up the bomb.
Chapter 5: Stevenson took Walter case and met Walter’s extended family. He got a call from the accuser’s (Bill Myers) colleague (Darrel Houston) who spoke about being with the accuser at work during the time of crime. This person was harassed and arrested by the police as a warning shot.
Chapter 6: The author narrated a juvenile being tried as an adult. Charlies, a 14-year-old boy, shot and skilled a police officer, George, after his mother’s boyfriend knocked his mother unconscious, not dead as he suspected. When Stevenson met Charlies at the adult prison, Charlie was still in shock from being raped by several men in the prison. The story had a good ending as a nice old white couples from a church Stevenson gave a speech to, eventually corresponded with Charlie and took him in as their own family.
Chapter 7: McMillian’s case got a break from getting Bill Myer’s withdrawal of the testimony. They finally got the incredulous police records.
Chapter 8: In this chapter, the three child lifer’s stories: Trina Garnet story was described – a sad case of poor, broken, large family whose mother died when she was 9. She later became homeless at 14 in order to escape her father’s sexual abuse then found herself in jail for indirectly causing 2 boys’ death in a fire. In the jail, she was raped by an correction officer and became pregnant. She’s serving life sentence and is now 53 years old. Then there is this Ian Manuel’s story of serving life sentence after shooting a victim in a failed robbery attempt. He was 13 years old. Another boy, Antonio Nunez, was given a life sentence at 14 for a fake kidnapping and attempted murder of police officer. No one was injured in this case.
Click ‘3’ below for next page