Good Kids, Bad City
A Story of Race and Wrongful Conviction in America
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
From award-winning investigative journalist Kyle Swenson, Good Kids, Bad City is the true story of the longest wrongful imprisonment in the United States to end in exoneration, and a critical social and political history of Cleveland, the city that convicted them.
In the early 1970s, three African-American men—Wiley Bridgeman, Kwame Ajamu, and Rickey Jackson—were accused and convicted of the brutal robbery and murder of a man outside of a convenience store in Cleveland, Ohio. The prosecution’s case, which resulted in a combined 106 years in prison for the three men, rested on the more-than-questionable testimony of a pre-teen, Ed Vernon.
The actual murderer was never found. Almost four decades later, Vernon recanted his testimony, and Wiley, Kwame, and Rickey were released. But while their exoneration may have ended one of American history’s most disgraceful miscarriages of justice, the corruption and decay of the city responsible for their imprisonment remain on trial.
Interweaving the dramatic details of the case with Cleveland’s history—one that, to this day, is fraught with systemic discrimination and racial tension—Swenson reveals how this outrage occurred and why. Good Kids, Bad City is a work of astonishing empathy and insight: an immersive exploration of race in America, the struggling Midwest, and how lost lives can be recovered.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In his vivid, extensively researched debut, Washington Post reporter Swenson uncovers the story of the longest wrongful imprisonment in U.S. history to end in exoneration. Three young black men Wiley Bridgeman, Kwame Ajamu (then Ronnie Bridgeman), and Rickey Jackson were convicted of the 1975 robbery and murder of a white salesman outside a Cleveland convenience store. Despite a glaring lack of physical evidence and a witness who testified they weren't the perpetrators, the prosecution claimed they were based solely on the testimony of 12-year-old Edward Vernon. Thirty-nine years later, Vernon recanted his coerced testimony and the men were released. With empathy, Swenson follows the three convicted men from their adolescence in a close-knit Cleveland neighborhood through the ways they handled their time in prison and their freedom. His equally sympathetic portrait of Vernon chronicles decades of substance abuse and addiction caused, in part, by guilt. Arguing this travesty of justice was rooted in the city's "larger failure," Swenson highlights the high crime rate, decaying infrastructure, race riots, and unchecked police corruption that plagued Cleveland during the 1960s and '70s, in addition to exploring the broader failures of the "war on crime" and the "war on drugs." Cinematically written, this powerful tragedy of racial injustice and urban dysfunction will make readers question the idea that America can promise "justice for all.")