Victims of Justice Revisited, a new book by Thomas Frisbie and Randy Garrett, details the inno­cence case of Rolando Cruz, an Illinois man who was wrong­ly con­vict­ed and sent to death row for the 1983 mur­der of 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico. The book tells the sto­ry of Cruz and his two co-defen­dants, Alejandro Hernandez and Stephen Buckley, from the day of the crime to the ground­break­ing tri­al of sev­en law enforce­ment offi­cers accused of con­spir­ing to deny Cruz a fair tri­al. Cruz’s case was one of sev­er­al inno­cence cas­es that led then-Governor George Ryan to declare a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions in Illinois. In this book, the authors use Cruz’s case to pro­vide read­ers with a detailed study of the death penal­ty in the United States. Author Scott Turow notes, ​“This is the first com­pre­hen­sive account of the most extra­or­di­nary crim­i­nal case I know — the infa­mous Nicarico mur­der ‑and the 12-year cru­sade for jus­tice which it inspired. The two men who were on the scene the longest, and who prob­a­bly know more about this case than any­one else, have writ­ten a grip­ping, provoca­tive, often mov­ing account of how great evil ‑and good-came to take place.” (Northwestern University Press, May 2005). See Innocence and Books.

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