This absorbing book is a systematic analysis of the litigation in Brown v. Mississippi, in which the Supreme Court made a pathbreaking decision in 1936 showing the unconstitutionality of coerced confessions. The case exonerated Ed Brown, Henry Shields, and Arthur (Yank) Ellington, three black sharecroppers who had confessed under torture to the murder of a white planter. This case, similar to the notorious "Scottsboro" case in Alabama, paved...