Victims of Justice

Tom Frisbie and Randy Garrett tell a remarkable story about a most remarkable case. In the end, justice finally prevails. After spending over 12 years in prison, Rolando Cruz and Alejandro Hernandez were finally exonerated. Remarkably, within a few short months after they were condemned to die the real killer confesses to the crime through the perserverance of Ed Cisowski, a dedicated cop with the Illinois State Police. But DuPage County officials feared that to admit their mistake would reveal another callous crime. The crime they committed in framing Cruz and Hernandez, two innocent teenagers. The DuPage 7, former prosecutors and police on trial for conpiracy and official misconduct should stand as a lesson to prosecutors and police everywhere.

Victims of Justice is an extraordinary tale of injustice andofficial misconduct so blatant that it is almost unthinkable. And itoffers a useful lesson in the use and abuse of capital punishment. One comes away from this book feeling that somehow a punishment must be fashioned to fit the crime. Yes, those who contend that some crimes are simply so horrible that they cry out for capital punishment have a point. Jim Ryan's is one such crime.

This book was very intriguing from the very first words. I was hooked by the incredible story line and authoring by Thomas Frisbie. This is a must have for all avid nonfiction readers. Great job!!!

Thomas Frisbie and Randy Garrett's "Victims of Justice" is the story of a now-famous Illinois murder case in which three innocent men were put on trial for their lives. While innocent people on trial is hardly a new concept, this case is particularly bothersome in that there were several convictions despite rather flimsy evidence. The authors set up this harrowing tale as an example of what they call "The Prosecution Complex," a phenomenon that encourages law-enforcement officials (from police to prosecutors to judges) to press to win cases with notoriety at nearly any cost while letting lesser cases go at insufficient plea bargains or worse.The crime at issue was the abduction, rape, and murder of ten-year-old Jeanine Nicarico. Given such an heinous crime, it is more than understandable that there should be a desire for swift and decisive "justice." However, what seems to have been lost on the people charged with meting out that justice is that it helps to have the right person. In this case, the right person was readily available and indeed confessed. But the state had already fixed its gaze on three innocents, and the fixed gaze, according to the Prosecution Complex, is not easily averted."Victims of Justice" tracks the prosecutions and appeals from the beginning to the end and along the way shows an astonishing amount of prosecutorial misconduct, judicial duplicity, juror error, and criminal police behavior. Every time the state needs to shore up a facet of its case, another jailhouse informant miraculously turns up with precisely the tonic in the form of one of the defendant's "confessions." Officers change their stories, and so does the prosecution. While the state hides evidence that it is legally obligated to turn over, judges look the other way and one justice of the Illinois Supreme Court even blatantly mistated that the state had produced physical evidence.Were this case not so well known and were it not for the indictments of seven of the prosecution's lawyers and police, "Victims of Justice" would seem to be outlandish fiction, the sort of thing that would make Turow (who plays a prominent role in the book) or Grisham blanch. What author of fiction, for example, would expect her readers to believe that a woman who claimed to be able to tell the race of a person by the footprint a new pair of shoes produced after 100 yards on carpet would be taken seriously? And yet such an "expert" was not only allowed to testify but was one of the state's star witnesses."Victims of Justice" does an admirable job of presenting the story in a linear, comprehensible (if not entirely disinterested) manner, and the result is simply horrifying. When a child is murdered, it is an obvious and egregious tragedy. But to allow the real killer to go free to kill again so that three innocent men can be put to death is no solution--or at least shouldn't be. While "Victims of Justice" should make any reader a

Authors Thomas Frisbie and Randy Garrett deserve nothing but praise for a terrific job of reporting and writing this sometimes-inspiring, sometimes-sickening and always-fascinating story. Victims of Justice is at once a highly readable account of one of the most ourtrageous injustices one could imagine happening in America in the final fifth of the twentiety century and an awe-inspiring chronicle of an heroic effort by lawyers and journalists who rescued two innocent men from death row. It is most satisfying that in the end the good guys win -- the innocent defendants, Rolando Cruz and Alex Hernandez, and their dedicated, pro bono lawyers, including Lawrence Marshall, Thomas Breen, Scott Turow, Jeffrey Urdangen, and Jeremy Margolis. But it is disappointing that the worst bad guy of them all also wins -- the unscrupulous prosecutor, James Ryan. It is with revulsion that we learn how he not only eluded just punishment for the atrocity he permitted but in fact was rewarded by being elected Attorney General of Illinois. This book tells it all like it really happened. While enough good can hardly be said for the authors' good work, it's impossible to resist tossing a barb at the publisher: It is a disservice to both the authors and the reading public to bring this important book out as a mass-market paperback. This story deserves to be preserved between hard covers, and it needs an index -- for the convenience of the historians who will find the work of Frisbie and Garrett useful in revisiting the barbarity of the criminal justice system at the end of the twentiety century.