A new book by Margaret Edds, an award-winning editorial writer with the Virginian-Pilot, explores the wrongful conviction of former Virginia death row inmate Earl Washington. “An Expendable Man: The Near-Execution of Earl Washington, Jr.” provides detailed analysis of the state’s prosecution of Washington, a mentally retarded man who spent almost 18 years in prison — nearly 10 of those on death row — for a murder he did not commit. The book reveals the relative ease with which individuals who live at society’s margins can be wrongfully convicted and the extraordinary difficulty of correcting such a wrong once it occurs. (New York University Press, 2003) See Resources.
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