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.