Injustice Town: A Corrupt City, a Wrongly Convicted Man, and a Struggle for Freedom, by Rick Tulsky
Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter-lawyer Rick Tulsky has been working for decades to explore the almost casual injustices of America’s justice system, especially as applied to African Americans. In Injustice Town, he admits to being shocked by a particular miscarriage that occurred in ‘90s Kansas City, resulting in the false conviction of a Black man, Lamonte McIntyre, for murder. Wrongful convictions result, Tulsky writes, from “bad cops, poor defense work, overzealous prosecutors, and judges who tip the scales … Lamonte experienced all of these, in extreme measures—as well as injustices I had never come across in any previous case.”
The successful battle to establish McIntrye’s innocence is compelling, but there is still no happy ending for injustice in America’s system. The optimism for reform was upended by the second election of the current occupant of the White House, who gutted the Justice Department’s civil rights division, turning its focus from investigating police abuse to scrutinizing DEI hiring practices. Injustice Town is a sobering examination of widespread failure rooted in race, public anxiety over crime and elected state judges that favor risk aversion over the pursuit of justice.
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