In his new book, Desire Street: A True Story of Death and Deliverance in New Orleans (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005), the Times-Picayune city editor Jed Horne examines the exoneration of Louisiana death row inmate Curtis Kyles and how his case has impacted the New Orleans criminal justice system. The book investigates the murder of Delores Dye, a 60-year-old housewife who was gunned down in full view of six eyewitnesses. Kyles was arrested and tried twice for the crime. After an initial mistrial, he was convicted of the crime and spent 14 years on death row before the U.S. Supreme Court reversed his original conviction. Since then, Kyles was retried unsuccessfully an additional three times and eventually freed with all charges dropped. Horne’s book looks at this case and uses Kyles’ experiences to demonstrate the broken criminal justice system in New Orleans, including a review of problems such as racism, the suspect nature of eyewitness identification, and the political nature of the relationship between death penalty cases and elected attorneys and judges.
(Review, Times-Picayune, Jan. 30, 2005). See Books and Innocence.
