Good Kids, Bad City

December 1, 2018
An empathetic report on the longest wrongful incarceration in the history of the United States to conclude with exoneration.In his debut book, an expansion of his popular Cleveland Scene feature, Washington Post journalist Swenson weaves together the dramatic details of a 1975 incident in Cleveland in which three black men were falsely accused and convicted of the murder of Harry Franks, a white man, outside of a convenience store. The author begins with a sweeping history of Cleveland, especially the 1960s and '70s, when increasing racial tensions and unrest haunted the region alongside rampant discrimination, urban infrastructural decay, and the crack epidemic that ushered in and decimated the city in the 1980s. Swenson introduces us to Kwame Ajamu, Wiley Bridgeman, and Rickey Jackson, boys for whom Cleveland had become their playground and true home. The author's portraits of the boys are carefully and lucidly drawn, as he captures their maturation into young men who were in the wrong place when Franks was fatally shot. At their trial, the prime witness, a 12-year-old neighborhood boy named Edward Vernon, testified against them, and all were charged with the murder despite a glaring absence of physical evidentiary support. Swenson also delivers a vital portrait of Vernon's adult life, plagued by drug abuse and unhappiness, and of his shocking retraction just as Bridgeman was paroled after 27 years in prison. Compelling and heartfelt, the author's cinematic chronicle moves swiftly through these events, and embedded in this tale of gross criminal injustice is the frustrating history and scarred legacy of Cleveland, a city harboring a "deepening woe" and mired in political corruption, racial conflict, and unbridled crime. Through in-person interviews and extensive, diligent research, Swenson brings this travesty of justice into impressive, necessary focus.In this sharply written, emotionally resonant rendering, the author makes crystal-clear the heartbreaking realities of wrongful imprisonment, race, and the many flaws of the American criminal justice system.

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February 1, 2019

After a 1975 murder-homicide of a white man in Cleveland, award-winning journalist Swenson follows Kwame Ajamu, Ricky Jackson, and Wiley Bridgman--three young black men wrongfully arrested, tried, convicted, and incarcerated for the crime. The author deftly develops a multilayered story of lives unjustly stolen amid the circumstances and experiences of a postindustrial city's struggles with an ugly past of racial anger and distrust. His focus also includes a critique of fatal errors that can significantly impact criminal prosecutions, from misguided detectives to belligerent prosecutors to false testimony by experts, all of which can lead to wrongful convictions. He shows how numbers-driven, procedure-geared litigation has furthered a culture favoring speed over accuracy, leading innocent people to be incarcerated at disproportionate rates and spawning a nationwide innocence movement to battle wrongful convictions. Lastly, the author calls for the reform of systemic practices, such as DNA exonerations. VERDICT Swenson's exposé lays bare the criminal justice system's failures, along with the politicization that the war on crime and war on drugs promoted. A must-read.--Thomas J. Davis, Arizona State Univ., Tempe

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2018
Journalist Swenson devotes his first book to the story of three wrongful convictions and the systems that contributed to innocent men spending more than three decades in prison. Based on the questionable testimony of a 12-year-old boy, Wiley Bridgeman, Kwame Ajamu, and Rickey Jackson were tried and convicted in 1975 of a murder and robbery that they did not commit. When Cleveland police arrested them, Ajamu and Jackson were only 18 years old, and Bridgeman was 21. All three maintained their innocence throughout their years in prison. In 2014, 39 years after the sentencing, the witness recanted his testimony. Swenson situates Bridgeman, Ajamu, and Jackson's tragic story in the larger historical context of race relations and politics in Cleveland and in the U.S. as a whole. With novelistic storytelling, Swenson explores long-standing issues in Cleveland's police department and justice system, outlining other wrongful convictions and the rise of DNA evidence in trials. With clear current relevance, Good Kids, Bad City is essential for readers of U.S. history, law, and culture.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)