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Good Kids, Bad City: A Story of Race and Wrongful Conviction in America
From award-winning investigative journalist Kyle Swenson, Good Kids, Bad City is the true story of the longest wrongful imprisonment in the United States to end in exoneration, and a critical social and political history of Cleveland, the city that convicted them.
In the early 1970s, three African-American men--Wiley Bridgeman, Kwame Ajamu, and Rickey Jackson--were accused and convicted of the brutal robbery and murder of a man outside of a convenience store in Cleveland, Ohio. The prosecution's case, which resulted in a combined 106 years in prison for the three men, rested on the more-than-questionable testimony of a pre-teen, Ed Vernon.
The actual murderer was never found. Almost four decades later, Vernon recanted his testimony, and Wiley, Kwame, and Rickey were released. But while their exoneration may have ended one of American history's most disgraceful miscarriages of justice, the corruption and decay of the city responsible for their imprisonment remain on trial.
Interweaving the dramatic details of the case with Cleveland's history--one that, to this day, is fraught with systemic discrimination and racial tension--Swenson reveals how this outrage occurred and why. Good Kids, Bad City is a work of astonishing empathy and insight: an immersive exploration of race in America, the struggling Midwest, and how lost lives can be recovered.
In the early 1970s, three African-American men--Wiley Bridgeman, Kwame Ajamu, and Rickey Jackson--were accused and convicted of the brutal robbery and murder of a man outside of a convenience store in Cleveland, Ohio. The prosecution's case, which resulted in a combined 106 years in prison for the three men, rested on the more-than-questionable testimony of a pre-teen, Ed Vernon.
The actual murderer was never found. Almost four decades later, Vernon recanted his testimony, and Wiley, Kwame, and Rickey were released. But while their exoneration may have ended one of American history's most disgraceful miscarriages of justice, the corruption and decay of the city responsible for their imprisonment remain on trial.
Interweaving the dramatic details of the case with Cleveland's history--one that, to this day, is fraught with systemic discrimination and racial tension--Swenson reveals how this outrage occurred and why. Good Kids, Bad City is a work of astonishing empathy and insight: an immersive exploration of race in America, the struggling Midwest, and how lost lives can be recovered.
304 pages, Hardcover
First published February 12, 2019
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February 4, 2019
A few years ago my youngest sister moved to Cleveland, which many people find a surprising move. It has a thriving foodie scene, a world-class art museum (where she works), and of course, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. However, since The Drew Carey Show, its only media hits tend to be about crime. So when I saw this book was about a wrongful murder conviction in Cleveland, and using that as an extrapolation point from which to look at the issues with the criminal justice and policing systems writ large, I jumped on it.
A sales rep who worked for a money order company was on his rounds of convenience stores, and had an unusually high amount of cash on him. Outside one store, he was jumped, had acid thrown on him, and was shot and killed. Three teens were convicted of the murder on the bases of a sole eyewitness, a small child. Dozens and dozens of other eyewitnesses were there, none of whom described these three boys as being on the scene. The boys had alibis. And the kid also was demonstrably not in a position to have seen what happened. And yet, they were convicted.
Almost 40 years later, they were released. Kyle Swenson tells their story. And he tells the story of Cleveland. How a city that was once proudly fully integrated, which scoffed at Jim Crow laws and refused to uphold them, later became one of the most segregated cities in the Midwest, and how its once-vaunted infrastructure and government crumbled at the hands of corruption, mismanagement, and social ills. By the 1970s, African-Americans in the city were pushed into smaller and smaller neighborhoods, which were crumbling and not maintained, but overly policed. And three teens had a very, very bad day which wasn't rectified for decades.
If you are enjoying the current season of Serial, you must read this book. It truly goes hand-in-hand with Sarah Koenig's reporting and Cleveland really isn't a bad city--it's like dozens of other cities across the US. This could have happened anywhere. In fact, stories just like this have happened everywhere. Luckily, these three men were freed. Not all are. And the murderers were never caught.
A sales rep who worked for a money order company was on his rounds of convenience stores, and had an unusually high amount of cash on him. Outside one store, he was jumped, had acid thrown on him, and was shot and killed. Three teens were convicted of the murder on the bases of a sole eyewitness, a small child. Dozens and dozens of other eyewitnesses were there, none of whom described these three boys as being on the scene. The boys had alibis. And the kid also was demonstrably not in a position to have seen what happened. And yet, they were convicted.
Almost 40 years later, they were released. Kyle Swenson tells their story. And he tells the story of Cleveland. How a city that was once proudly fully integrated, which scoffed at Jim Crow laws and refused to uphold them, later became one of the most segregated cities in the Midwest, and how its once-vaunted infrastructure and government crumbled at the hands of corruption, mismanagement, and social ills. By the 1970s, African-Americans in the city were pushed into smaller and smaller neighborhoods, which were crumbling and not maintained, but overly policed. And three teens had a very, very bad day which wasn't rectified for decades.
If you are enjoying the current season of Serial, you must read this book. It truly goes hand-in-hand with Sarah Koenig's reporting and Cleveland really isn't a bad city--it's like dozens of other cities across the US. This could have happened anywhere. In fact, stories just like this have happened everywhere. Luckily, these three men were freed. Not all are. And the murderers were never caught.
August 23, 2018
This story is wonderfully written and shares a great deal of information to the reader. You have enough evidence to make your case and have your own opinion. My opinion is innocent. In 1970’s 3 black men were accused of robbing and killing a man outside of a convenience store in Cleveland Ohio. They were all three charged and sentenced to a total of 106 yrs for all three together. They were convicted based on eye witness testimony from a young man who later recanted his testimony. At that time the three were released and now because of time and lack of forensic evidence, they probably will never know who the killer actually was. I felt like the uthor was trying to get all of the information out there but not so much trying to sway the reader in one way or another. This could actually be made easily into a documentary or even a movie. Our justice system was flawed then and it is flawed now. This is another example of such. I hope that this writer continues to write especially about situations like this.
Thanks to netgalley as well as the author/publisher for allowing me to read this novel in exchange for my honest review.
5 stars ⭐️ out of 5
Thanks to netgalley as well as the author/publisher for allowing me to read this novel in exchange for my honest review.
5 stars ⭐️ out of 5
November 21, 2018
Ricky Jackson and Ronnie and Wiley Bridgeman were good kids. Cleveland, Ohio, was a bad city, rife with crime and corruption, where racism was manifested in hypersegregation that resulted in a regional government that served and protected the white suburbs and hollowed out and devastated black urban neighborhoods. When a money order salesman was robbed and murdered, these three young men were nowhere near the crime, but that didn’t matter thanks to a twelve-year-old boy’s desire to be helpful and the police desire to arrest someone, anyone.
In 1975, these three men were convicted in spite of conflicting witness testimony primarily on the evidence of the young boy. They were sentenced to death, though reprieved when the Court determined Ohio’s sentencing system was unconstitutional. Thirty-nine years later they were finally exonerated when the young man, now in his fifties, finally recanted. He knew his testimony was false and that seemed a curse on his life, but still, it took a lot of pressure to get him to finally come clean.
Kyle Swenson brings the reporter’s attention to detail to chronicle the cultural and economic conditions of Cleveland, the effects of racism and corruption, the lack of accountability in police and prosecutors, as well as the stories of these three men, Ricky, Wiley, and Kwame Ajamu (neé Ronnie Bridgeman) in prison and seeking exoneration.
Good Kids, Bad City does a good job of reporting the systemic problems that led to this gross injustice, the men who were exonerated served more time than any other exonerees. I often think we avoid the systemic problems by focusing on bad actors, but he is more forgiving of Edward Vernon than I am. Certainly, a twelve-year-old bullied and threatened into false identifications can be forgiven, but what about when Wiley was paroled in 2001 and Vernon, too guilty to face him, intervenes to make him lose his place. Vernon may not have made Wiley violate parole by arguing with his parole officer, but he intervened to make his life harder. He wasn’t twelve then.
Otherwise, though, I think Good Kids, Bad City is an excellent example of an individual (or three individual) injustices that reveal wider systemic problems that urgently need redress. A grave injustice happened, but these three men, after nearly forty years, were finally exonerated. How many, I have to wonder, remain imprisoned, their justice dependent on the overburdened Innocence Projects in the various states and whether they can catch someone’s attention.
If you believe the United States has a fair system of justice, you will be shocked by the collusion of prosecution in police in convicting innocent men and by their continued intransigence in defending the actions of bad actors forty years ago. If you have been reading and studying the interplay of race and justice, you will recognize the same problems that occur over and over in so many stories.
Good Kids, Bad City will be published Feb 12, 2019. I received a copy from the publisher through NetGalley.
Good Kids, Bad City at Macmillan | Picador
Kyle Swenson at The Washington Post
https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpre...
In 1975, these three men were convicted in spite of conflicting witness testimony primarily on the evidence of the young boy. They were sentenced to death, though reprieved when the Court determined Ohio’s sentencing system was unconstitutional. Thirty-nine years later they were finally exonerated when the young man, now in his fifties, finally recanted. He knew his testimony was false and that seemed a curse on his life, but still, it took a lot of pressure to get him to finally come clean.
Kyle Swenson brings the reporter’s attention to detail to chronicle the cultural and economic conditions of Cleveland, the effects of racism and corruption, the lack of accountability in police and prosecutors, as well as the stories of these three men, Ricky, Wiley, and Kwame Ajamu (neé Ronnie Bridgeman) in prison and seeking exoneration.
Good Kids, Bad City does a good job of reporting the systemic problems that led to this gross injustice, the men who were exonerated served more time than any other exonerees. I often think we avoid the systemic problems by focusing on bad actors, but he is more forgiving of Edward Vernon than I am. Certainly, a twelve-year-old bullied and threatened into false identifications can be forgiven, but what about when Wiley was paroled in 2001 and Vernon, too guilty to face him, intervenes to make him lose his place. Vernon may not have made Wiley violate parole by arguing with his parole officer, but he intervened to make his life harder. He wasn’t twelve then.
Otherwise, though, I think Good Kids, Bad City is an excellent example of an individual (or three individual) injustices that reveal wider systemic problems that urgently need redress. A grave injustice happened, but these three men, after nearly forty years, were finally exonerated. How many, I have to wonder, remain imprisoned, their justice dependent on the overburdened Innocence Projects in the various states and whether they can catch someone’s attention.
If you believe the United States has a fair system of justice, you will be shocked by the collusion of prosecution in police in convicting innocent men and by their continued intransigence in defending the actions of bad actors forty years ago. If you have been reading and studying the interplay of race and justice, you will recognize the same problems that occur over and over in so many stories.
Good Kids, Bad City will be published Feb 12, 2019. I received a copy from the publisher through NetGalley.
Good Kids, Bad City at Macmillan | Picador
Kyle Swenson at The Washington Post
https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpre...
March 25, 2019
“...the American justice system repeatedly fails to fully analyze its own mistakes and abuses. In wrongful convictions, lawsuits and cash settlements have become common, but the system itself has little inclination to push deeper with detailed inquisition into how it could break down so catastrophically.”
“Good Kids, Bad City” is the story of the wrongful conviction, and ultimate exoneration of Wiley Bridgeman, Kwame Ajamu (formerly Ronnie Bridgeman) and Rickey Jackson. The three were convicted of the murder of Harry J Franks in 1975, solely on the basis of the testimony of then 13 year old Ed Vernon. All three maintained their innocence and were incarcerated for a combined 106 years, part of the time on death row.
But the book is also about the history of Cleveland politics and corruption and racial inequity and injustice.
On May 19, 1975, 58 year old money order salesman Harry J Franks collected $429.55 from a client and traveled to his next client, Cut-Rate, owned by Bob and Anna Robinson. As he exited the Cut-Rate, two young men hit him with a pipe, threw acid in his face, shot him and stole his briefcase. Mrs. Robinson was also shot through the store door.
Ed Vernon, a 13 year old schoolboy, identified the Bridgemans and Jackson as the culprits. They were convicted solely on his testimony, despite conflicting testimony by eyewitness.
Kwame was paroled in 2003. In 2011, he was attempting to find help to get Wiley and Ricky out of jail. A well known Cleveland attorney sent him to a reporter at the Cleveland Scene, Kyle Swenson. Swenson did his own research, concluding that the three men were innocent and in June of 2011, the Cleveland Scene published a story about the case and the innocence of the three men. Nothing happened. “Yet outside of a couple emails, hey great job, keep it up, the response was nil...There was real world heft to this: two men were sitting in prison cells, a third was adrift between a past he was powerless to escape and a present he couldn’t comfortably embrace.”
In the meantime, Ricky was sending jailhouse letters to everybody and anybody who would listen. Ultimately, he got the attention of the Ohio Innocence Project. In 2014, Ed Vernon publicly recanted his 1975 testimony and the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor withdrew its case. Wiley and Ricky were freed, after each served roughly 39 years of incarceration.
This summary of the book does not relay the intensity and emotion of the story. The men’s friends and neighbors from 1975 were aware of their innocence but never spoke up. The police manipulated young Ed Vernon and arguably withheld conflicting evidence. The men had bright futures which were literally stolen from them. The horror of their experience is hard to overstate.
The book also tells the history of Cleveland politics and police corruption. It describes the segregation of the city then and now and the inability to improve living conditions in predominantly black communities while downtown Cleveland thrives. And sadly, the book highlights how as much as things change, they stay the same. One day after Rickey Jackson was released from jail, Tamir Rice, a 12 year old black Cleveland boy holding a toy gun, was killed by Cleveland police. The officers involved were not charged.
“The thirty-second soundbite version being promoted here was that a boy lied, innocent men were sent to prison, and now they had been cleared. That view, however, ignored all the critical context of Cleveland racial politics, not to mention the direct role police detectives allegedly played in forcing Ed to falsely testify. Without those pieces, the Jackson-Bridgeman case existed in a vacuum, a one-time piece of tragic luck; but within the framework of Cleveland’s history, the wrongful conviction felt chained to so much more than what a boy saw or didn’t see.”
The book is a real life tragedy. Despite some cringe worthy writing in places, this book is a must read if you want to understand the inequities of our system and the bold efforts of many to right these wrongs. If you like this review, subscribe to www.frombriefstobooks.com for more
“Good Kids, Bad City” is the story of the wrongful conviction, and ultimate exoneration of Wiley Bridgeman, Kwame Ajamu (formerly Ronnie Bridgeman) and Rickey Jackson. The three were convicted of the murder of Harry J Franks in 1975, solely on the basis of the testimony of then 13 year old Ed Vernon. All three maintained their innocence and were incarcerated for a combined 106 years, part of the time on death row.
But the book is also about the history of Cleveland politics and corruption and racial inequity and injustice.
On May 19, 1975, 58 year old money order salesman Harry J Franks collected $429.55 from a client and traveled to his next client, Cut-Rate, owned by Bob and Anna Robinson. As he exited the Cut-Rate, two young men hit him with a pipe, threw acid in his face, shot him and stole his briefcase. Mrs. Robinson was also shot through the store door.
Ed Vernon, a 13 year old schoolboy, identified the Bridgemans and Jackson as the culprits. They were convicted solely on his testimony, despite conflicting testimony by eyewitness.
Kwame was paroled in 2003. In 2011, he was attempting to find help to get Wiley and Ricky out of jail. A well known Cleveland attorney sent him to a reporter at the Cleveland Scene, Kyle Swenson. Swenson did his own research, concluding that the three men were innocent and in June of 2011, the Cleveland Scene published a story about the case and the innocence of the three men. Nothing happened. “Yet outside of a couple emails, hey great job, keep it up, the response was nil...There was real world heft to this: two men were sitting in prison cells, a third was adrift between a past he was powerless to escape and a present he couldn’t comfortably embrace.”
In the meantime, Ricky was sending jailhouse letters to everybody and anybody who would listen. Ultimately, he got the attention of the Ohio Innocence Project. In 2014, Ed Vernon publicly recanted his 1975 testimony and the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor withdrew its case. Wiley and Ricky were freed, after each served roughly 39 years of incarceration.
This summary of the book does not relay the intensity and emotion of the story. The men’s friends and neighbors from 1975 were aware of their innocence but never spoke up. The police manipulated young Ed Vernon and arguably withheld conflicting evidence. The men had bright futures which were literally stolen from them. The horror of their experience is hard to overstate.
The book also tells the history of Cleveland politics and police corruption. It describes the segregation of the city then and now and the inability to improve living conditions in predominantly black communities while downtown Cleveland thrives. And sadly, the book highlights how as much as things change, they stay the same. One day after Rickey Jackson was released from jail, Tamir Rice, a 12 year old black Cleveland boy holding a toy gun, was killed by Cleveland police. The officers involved were not charged.
“The thirty-second soundbite version being promoted here was that a boy lied, innocent men were sent to prison, and now they had been cleared. That view, however, ignored all the critical context of Cleveland racial politics, not to mention the direct role police detectives allegedly played in forcing Ed to falsely testify. Without those pieces, the Jackson-Bridgeman case existed in a vacuum, a one-time piece of tragic luck; but within the framework of Cleveland’s history, the wrongful conviction felt chained to so much more than what a boy saw or didn’t see.”
The book is a real life tragedy. Despite some cringe worthy writing in places, this book is a must read if you want to understand the inequities of our system and the bold efforts of many to right these wrongs. If you like this review, subscribe to www.frombriefstobooks.com for more
March 9, 2019
Okay full disclosure here--this book is about something that happened in Cleveland, Ohio a few months before I was born. I have been a life-long resident of Northeast Ohio except for the six years I spent in Northwest Ohio (as a student at Bowling Green State University) and I have been a resident of the city of Cleveland proper for over twelve years. I am proud to be from the area and to be a Clevelander, and this book kind of shits on Cleveland. However, it does so for good reason, as the story of the Bridgemans and Rickey Jackson is a stain on the city (much like our adherence to calling the local baseball franchise "the Indians" along with the racist caricature of Chief Wahoo is a stain on the city.) However, I feel the story contained in Good Kids, Bad City is not endemic of Cleveland itself, but could take place in any urban center that has dealt with the racist history of this country as well as the the broken relationship between those who set, enforce and adjudicate the laws and the minorities that seem to be put at a disadvantage in that system. That said, this story takes place in Cleveland and as a resident I have a personal stake in my home not being looked at in a poor light...but I can also attest to the injustice contained in Good Kids, Bad City.
Now that we have that out of the way...
The social contract is broken. That is the primary thrust of Good Kids, Bad City by Kyle Swenson. What I mean by this is that the sets of laws, the enforcement of the laws and the adjudication of the laws is set up to benefit one sort of citizen in the United States--the white citizen. Just yesterday, Paul Manafort, who is a piece of shit, was said to have lead "an otherwise blameless life" by Judge T.S. Ellis, who only sentenced Manafort to 47 months in prison, when it could have been much worse. (That statement is the biggest, steaming pile of horseshit ever.) Meanwhile, one of the protagonists of Good Kids, Bad City spent almost forty years in jail for a crime he did not commit. Ellis gave a Jamaican woman 6 years for the same sort of con that Manafort pulled and got four years for...and netted $24.5 million more for the crimes he committed ($25 million vs. $385,000.) Obviously the system is rigged for assholes like Manafort.
One of the primary issues with American culture is that the foundations were built on slavery and the wealth enjoyed by the privileged ultimately was generated by enslaving others. Once emancipated, those slaves were still considered inferior by the privileged (even by those who advocated their emancipation) and ultimately because they were considered inferior they were also considered disposable, even as enslavement was supposedly relegated to the dustbin of history. This disposability is the primary conceit of Ta-Nehisi Coates' book Between the World and Me and I suggest you read that to understand what I am talking about, but ultimately, the disposability of the descendants of slaves is what leads to the events of Good Kids, Bad City. The attitude of the Cleveland police force in the 1970s was that African-Americans, ultimately cut off from the rest of the city by the boundaries of the neighborhoods they inhabited, were nothing but trouble and ultimately, replaceable when attempting to attribute crimes that occurred within the urban core (one thinks of the racist conceit of "they all look alike" in this instance.) All the Cleveland cops needed was one African-American willing to step up and turn on their neighbors to make this happen. A kid, Ed Vernon, was the unwilling dupe in this--he spoke up only to find himself threatened by the police when he wouldn't speak against who they decided were the bad guys here--thus allowing the police to view African-Americans interchangeably. In their minds it didn't matter who got sent up for the crime--they were all worthless anyway.
Given that the Bridgemans and the Jackson were convicted with the coerced testimony of an unreliable witness, one would think that once the mistake was made, The system would be set up to help make this right once someone had seen the truth of the situation. But here Swenson throws a curveball--the system is set up in such a way that the court's default attitude is that it never makes mistakes, even when it does. Add to this the fact that the system protects its own--police officers are rarely ever held to account for their actions, and soon it is easy to see how Rickey Jackson was left to rot in a jail cell for a crime he didn't commit for almost 40 years. Yes, he was financially compensated for his time once the error was rectified, but he wasted most of his life in that cell and he can never get the prime of his life back. And why? Because some racist Cleveland cops decided that African-American males were interchangeable when it came to inner city crime. The day after Jackson was exonerated, a child, Tamir Rice, was gunned down by two Cleveland police officers who thought he had a rifle. It was a BB gun. Those officers were never held accountable for Rice's death. I understand that policing is a tough job, but somehow, when white people with weapons get into it with police they always seem to come out of the ordeal whole. The Cleveland police, through their actions over the years have proven they don't value people who live in the African-American community--Anthony Sowell was able to continue unabated as a serial killer for years because the Cleveland Police didn't value any of the women he was preying upon. It's just a different application of the same racist attitude.
As a resident of the city of Cleveland, I know that this doesn't speak well for the city. But I think people would be hard pressed to say this only happens in Cleveland. Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and Laquan McDonald among others are proof that in the urban core where most African-Americans live, they simply don't matter to those who a "sworn to serve and protect." If they did, these things wouldn't keep happening over and over again. There was a reason why the #blacklivesmatter hashtag needed to come into existence--because the system says that they don't. The reason that privileged whites have such a hard time with this is because my experience tells me that privileged whites don't like it when their own racist history and how they have always benefited from that history is laid bare before their eyes. They want to buy into the myth that they are self-made and that America stands for a meritocracy where anyone can make it. But the fact of the matter is that kid born in the Cleveland suburb of Beachwood starts so much further up the track than kids like the Bridgemans and Jackson who were born in the inner city of Cleveland. If there starting lines aren't the same, the meritocracy is bullshit and those privileged white folks know it. They just don't like what they see in the mirror.
And this is why they ignore the injustice. This is why the Bridgemans and Jackson languished in a cell for over three decades. Because when everybody could make it right, they chose not to. Ed Vernon may have had an excuse--he chose to speak up and then when he tried to walk it back, he became another victim, just like the Bridgemans and Jackson. But his prison was of his own making and his guilt ruined his life too. But if it hadn't been Vernon, those racist cops would have found someone else to threaten and cajole. All so they could close the book a murder that they didn't feel like solving. To them the entire African-American community was to blame. In the end, it wouldn't make a difference if someone who wasn't responsible had to pay the price.
In the end, you would want to think that the Bridgemans and Jackson being exonerated would be a happy ending of sorts, but there's no way it can be. Their lives were destroyed and more lives are destroyed every day. Yes the state could provide them financial compensation for their colossal fuck up in 1975, but what about Tamir Rice? That mistake can't be fixed--Rice is dead and no one was held accountable. The attitude that African-Americans are somehow worth less than white people is still a shameful but evident fact. How do we solve it?
Now that we have that out of the way...
The social contract is broken. That is the primary thrust of Good Kids, Bad City by Kyle Swenson. What I mean by this is that the sets of laws, the enforcement of the laws and the adjudication of the laws is set up to benefit one sort of citizen in the United States--the white citizen. Just yesterday, Paul Manafort, who is a piece of shit, was said to have lead "an otherwise blameless life" by Judge T.S. Ellis, who only sentenced Manafort to 47 months in prison, when it could have been much worse. (That statement is the biggest, steaming pile of horseshit ever.) Meanwhile, one of the protagonists of Good Kids, Bad City spent almost forty years in jail for a crime he did not commit. Ellis gave a Jamaican woman 6 years for the same sort of con that Manafort pulled and got four years for...and netted $24.5 million more for the crimes he committed ($25 million vs. $385,000.) Obviously the system is rigged for assholes like Manafort.
One of the primary issues with American culture is that the foundations were built on slavery and the wealth enjoyed by the privileged ultimately was generated by enslaving others. Once emancipated, those slaves were still considered inferior by the privileged (even by those who advocated their emancipation) and ultimately because they were considered inferior they were also considered disposable, even as enslavement was supposedly relegated to the dustbin of history. This disposability is the primary conceit of Ta-Nehisi Coates' book Between the World and Me and I suggest you read that to understand what I am talking about, but ultimately, the disposability of the descendants of slaves is what leads to the events of Good Kids, Bad City. The attitude of the Cleveland police force in the 1970s was that African-Americans, ultimately cut off from the rest of the city by the boundaries of the neighborhoods they inhabited, were nothing but trouble and ultimately, replaceable when attempting to attribute crimes that occurred within the urban core (one thinks of the racist conceit of "they all look alike" in this instance.) All the Cleveland cops needed was one African-American willing to step up and turn on their neighbors to make this happen. A kid, Ed Vernon, was the unwilling dupe in this--he spoke up only to find himself threatened by the police when he wouldn't speak against who they decided were the bad guys here--thus allowing the police to view African-Americans interchangeably. In their minds it didn't matter who got sent up for the crime--they were all worthless anyway.
Given that the Bridgemans and the Jackson were convicted with the coerced testimony of an unreliable witness, one would think that once the mistake was made, The system would be set up to help make this right once someone had seen the truth of the situation. But here Swenson throws a curveball--the system is set up in such a way that the court's default attitude is that it never makes mistakes, even when it does. Add to this the fact that the system protects its own--police officers are rarely ever held to account for their actions, and soon it is easy to see how Rickey Jackson was left to rot in a jail cell for a crime he didn't commit for almost 40 years. Yes, he was financially compensated for his time once the error was rectified, but he wasted most of his life in that cell and he can never get the prime of his life back. And why? Because some racist Cleveland cops decided that African-American males were interchangeable when it came to inner city crime. The day after Jackson was exonerated, a child, Tamir Rice, was gunned down by two Cleveland police officers who thought he had a rifle. It was a BB gun. Those officers were never held accountable for Rice's death. I understand that policing is a tough job, but somehow, when white people with weapons get into it with police they always seem to come out of the ordeal whole. The Cleveland police, through their actions over the years have proven they don't value people who live in the African-American community--Anthony Sowell was able to continue unabated as a serial killer for years because the Cleveland Police didn't value any of the women he was preying upon. It's just a different application of the same racist attitude.
As a resident of the city of Cleveland, I know that this doesn't speak well for the city. But I think people would be hard pressed to say this only happens in Cleveland. Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and Laquan McDonald among others are proof that in the urban core where most African-Americans live, they simply don't matter to those who a "sworn to serve and protect." If they did, these things wouldn't keep happening over and over again. There was a reason why the #blacklivesmatter hashtag needed to come into existence--because the system says that they don't. The reason that privileged whites have such a hard time with this is because my experience tells me that privileged whites don't like it when their own racist history and how they have always benefited from that history is laid bare before their eyes. They want to buy into the myth that they are self-made and that America stands for a meritocracy where anyone can make it. But the fact of the matter is that kid born in the Cleveland suburb of Beachwood starts so much further up the track than kids like the Bridgemans and Jackson who were born in the inner city of Cleveland. If there starting lines aren't the same, the meritocracy is bullshit and those privileged white folks know it. They just don't like what they see in the mirror.
And this is why they ignore the injustice. This is why the Bridgemans and Jackson languished in a cell for over three decades. Because when everybody could make it right, they chose not to. Ed Vernon may have had an excuse--he chose to speak up and then when he tried to walk it back, he became another victim, just like the Bridgemans and Jackson. But his prison was of his own making and his guilt ruined his life too. But if it hadn't been Vernon, those racist cops would have found someone else to threaten and cajole. All so they could close the book a murder that they didn't feel like solving. To them the entire African-American community was to blame. In the end, it wouldn't make a difference if someone who wasn't responsible had to pay the price.
In the end, you would want to think that the Bridgemans and Jackson being exonerated would be a happy ending of sorts, but there's no way it can be. Their lives were destroyed and more lives are destroyed every day. Yes the state could provide them financial compensation for their colossal fuck up in 1975, but what about Tamir Rice? That mistake can't be fixed--Rice is dead and no one was held accountable. The attitude that African-Americans are somehow worth less than white people is still a shameful but evident fact. How do we solve it?
April 12, 2019
Good Kids, Bad City is another in an unfortunate series of books that address race and incarceration in this racially divided United States. This is an extremely well researched book that addresses the history of racial uprisings based ,this time, in Cleveland, Ohio.
Ricky Jackson and Ronnie and Wiley Bridgeman were good kids. Cleveland, Ohio, a bad city, known for it’s corruption and crime. Cleveland’s racism was in part caused by extreme segregation, resulting in more racism and a government that protected white communities. This served well in the white neighborhoods, but devastated the black sections. When a salesman was robbed and murdered, three young men were nowhere near the crime, but were arrested in order to close the crime.
In 1975, these three boys were convicted in spite of conflicting witness testimony primarily on the evidence of a 12 year old boy, who wanted to be “helpful” to the police. Sentenced to death, they were reprieved when the Court determined Ohio’s system of sentencing was unconstitutional.
It took thirty nine years for the young boy, now in his 50’s to recant his “eye witness report”.
Good Kids, Bad City makes any reader sickened when the realization occurs that these boys did more time than any other people who were eventually exonerated. It brings to the surface how the systematic racism that is our Justice system, does much injustice to communities of color. I am still angry how long it took the twelve year old witness to come forward to exonerated these young men. So many lives wasted.
Every white person who thinks racism is dead in the US should be forced to read this book, among others that accurately describe how there are two separate justice systems, one for whites, and the second, and much more severe, for people of color. Shame on all of us!
Thanks to #NetGalley and the publisher for a free ebook in exchange for an honest review. #GoodKidsBadCity
Ricky Jackson and Ronnie and Wiley Bridgeman were good kids. Cleveland, Ohio, a bad city, known for it’s corruption and crime. Cleveland’s racism was in part caused by extreme segregation, resulting in more racism and a government that protected white communities. This served well in the white neighborhoods, but devastated the black sections. When a salesman was robbed and murdered, three young men were nowhere near the crime, but were arrested in order to close the crime.
In 1975, these three boys were convicted in spite of conflicting witness testimony primarily on the evidence of a 12 year old boy, who wanted to be “helpful” to the police. Sentenced to death, they were reprieved when the Court determined Ohio’s system of sentencing was unconstitutional.
It took thirty nine years for the young boy, now in his 50’s to recant his “eye witness report”.
Good Kids, Bad City makes any reader sickened when the realization occurs that these boys did more time than any other people who were eventually exonerated. It brings to the surface how the systematic racism that is our Justice system, does much injustice to communities of color. I am still angry how long it took the twelve year old witness to come forward to exonerated these young men. So many lives wasted.
Every white person who thinks racism is dead in the US should be forced to read this book, among others that accurately describe how there are two separate justice systems, one for whites, and the second, and much more severe, for people of color. Shame on all of us!
Thanks to #NetGalley and the publisher for a free ebook in exchange for an honest review. #GoodKidsBadCity
March 24, 2020
Lively writing and of particular interest to those of us from NE Ohio. I hadn't heard of this story at all.
March 2, 2019
Life can taken from you at any time. One moment you’re a fifteen year old boy in Cleveland, Ohio who’s never been in any trouble, playing with your friends on just another day in 1975 when suddenly you’re being whisked through the criminal justice system before you knew what hit you. That’s the story of this book and of teenagers Ronnie and Wiley Bridgeman and their friend Rickey Jackson.
On a May afternoon in 1975 a man is shot and robbed in front of a convenience store. A twelve year old boy in the crowd of onlookers tells the police he knows about what happened. Based solely on that dubious evidence, the Bridgeman boys and Rickey Jackson would spend the next forty in prison for a crime they didn’t commit.
If they story just ended there however, it would simply be like the countless stories of the wrongfully accused, young black men before it. What makes this book outstanding however is that their stories are inextricably linked to the slow and painful decline of Cleveland as a city and the racial fault lines that seem to make outcomes like this all too common.
The author explores Cleveland’s roots as a city that was once remarkably integrated compared to the rest of the country, where Blacks and Whites worked side by side until the middle of the 20th century where city planning, Black flight from the South, and the corresponding White flight saw the city begin to separate along racial lines. It’s a story that occurred around the country but was particularly pronounced in Cleveland due to the lack of such segregation on its historical background.
Also important is the endemic and longstanding corruption in the Cleveland police department that allows stories like that of these three boys to happen.
This is the story of a human tragedy writ small in the lives of three men wrongfully imprisoned but also writ large in the form of the decay of the American city. Reading this book, it becomes abundantly clear that the symbiotic relationship of these two tragedies seems destined to continue so long as we continue to refuse to address race, mass incarceration, and its history.
On a May afternoon in 1975 a man is shot and robbed in front of a convenience store. A twelve year old boy in the crowd of onlookers tells the police he knows about what happened. Based solely on that dubious evidence, the Bridgeman boys and Rickey Jackson would spend the next forty in prison for a crime they didn’t commit.
If they story just ended there however, it would simply be like the countless stories of the wrongfully accused, young black men before it. What makes this book outstanding however is that their stories are inextricably linked to the slow and painful decline of Cleveland as a city and the racial fault lines that seem to make outcomes like this all too common.
The author explores Cleveland’s roots as a city that was once remarkably integrated compared to the rest of the country, where Blacks and Whites worked side by side until the middle of the 20th century where city planning, Black flight from the South, and the corresponding White flight saw the city begin to separate along racial lines. It’s a story that occurred around the country but was particularly pronounced in Cleveland due to the lack of such segregation on its historical background.
Also important is the endemic and longstanding corruption in the Cleveland police department that allows stories like that of these three boys to happen.
This is the story of a human tragedy writ small in the lives of three men wrongfully imprisoned but also writ large in the form of the decay of the American city. Reading this book, it becomes abundantly clear that the symbiotic relationship of these two tragedies seems destined to continue so long as we continue to refuse to address race, mass incarceration, and its history.
March 7, 2019
I haven't loved a book at this level in a long time. I can recommend this one to anyone, without reservations--it ought to be required reading. It does an exceptional job of setting a wrongful conviction in a city's racial, economic, and historical context. On top of this, it is a profound insight into wrongful convictions. As a white woman, I have taken for granted that I will not be accused of a crime I didn't commit, and if I were that I would surely not be convicted of it. It is mind bending to imagine being imprisoned for most of my life for something I did not do, and the idea is so unjust that just the thought leaves me outraged. But the author put it best:
"I began to seriously consider that if this man was telling the truth, if a lie...had ruined so much, the human toll was inestimable. The size of that hurt--the emotional mileage and pain and despair--was too big to properly think through. I really couldn't." (pg. 145)
"I began to seriously consider that if this man was telling the truth, if a lie...had ruined so much, the human toll was inestimable. The size of that hurt--the emotional mileage and pain and despair--was too big to properly think through. I really couldn't." (pg. 145)
June 27, 2020
Overall I would likely give this book three stars due to the slightly slow pace and the magnifying glass it uses to review frivolous details that hold no bearing on the story and provide little use to the reader. However, the author includes a nugget of wisdom that I feel earns a star all on its own. To paraphrase - racism isn't always manifest in the things we say or do, though it certainly might be. Sometimes racism is manifested as a complete inability to empathize. Groups of people don't have the same life experiences and therefore are unable to understand. The author goes on to state that we should not only hold ourselves responsible for the way we see the world, we should also take responsibility to learn about those things that we don't see/understand due to our lack of perspective. If we can expand our view to include others' perspectives we'll finally be able to see the world as it really is.
April 22, 2019
"There is responsibility in our perspectives. We're accountable for what we see in the world, and more importantly, we're responsible for what we don't see."
"There's every reason to believe the number of innocent men and women sitting in American prisons is far larger than we suspect. This has everything to do not only with how our legal system has developed over the last sixty years, but how American culture itself has shifted-changes legible in Cleveland's own story."
"The American criminal justice system isn't wired for claims of innocence. The mechanisms just aren't there, and the reasons why run deep. Much of it lies in the basic decentralized setup: each of the fifty states has its own criminal justice system; the federal courts run parallel to the local judiciary. Together, this creates a mess of overlapping jurisdictions and crisscrossing legal avenues, counter-case law and precedent and political leanings- a lot of white noise often drowning out real pleas for help."
"As I began digging into Kwame's case, I realized this was a story that highlighted all the major issues marking Cleveland's history, the same mix of politics, race, and law that has stained and steered every American city in the last seventy years. Yet for all the historical and personal pain his story contained, there were also lights leading forward. This story is about more than three lives unjustly stolen; it's also about how a city can finally face down-and fix-its ugly past."
"For twenty-eight years he had told people his story, only to watch them dismiss it as improbable. The work of an overactive, self-serving imagination. A denial of guilt. A criminal's bullshit. So after leaving prison, he stopped talking about his past."
"The reason: the Castle Doctrine, a stand-your-ground-style law cooked up by the National Rifle Association and spoon-fed to the Republican-controlled state legislature, part of the national creep to expand gun laws."
"Any urban studies professor worth tenure will tell you that from a governance standpoint, a regional, countywide authority is the best political structure for handling the civic challenges presented by postindustrial America-the challenges aimed directly at Northeast Ohion's head. A regional government can rule based on the interests of the entire region, rather than the narrower goals and needs specific to cities. But the Cleveland area had fended off any political rethink because of the detente between county and city-between white and black. Cleveland was left to black politicians. The county stayed with white suburbanites, Any strong regional government would dilute the sway of the former and dump urban problems on the latter. It was a mutually beneficial balancing act."
"In my experience," the professor said, "racism isn't just institutional, or even outright, blatant expressions of bigotry. It is a lack of empathy."
"So, as recent Cleveland history attests, there's no one weak spot in the armor: the fatal errors behind a wrongful conviction can come at any point in the process-from misguided detectives to belligerent prosecutors to lying experts on the government payroll."
"The courage of a sixteen-year-old girl to keep facts straight under that full-court press must have been considerable. Then to go to trial, telling her story while trying to fend off hostile assaults and embarrassing innuendo ("Do you go on many dates, Karen?" from prosecutors-the kind woman I was speaking with had shown serious resolve as a teenager."
"It would have been easier for Kwame if the whole neighborhood had written him off as guilty-but for all these people to know the truth, and ignore it, and let three boys go to prison was a terrible thing for him to comprehend. More so now: staying tight-lipped as a child was understandable. But as an adult?
"In his 2011 book The Collapse of American Criminal Justice, the late Harvard legal scholar William J. Stuntz write that it was a grave mistake "to tie the law of criminal procedure to the federal Bill of Rights instead of using that body of law to advance some coherent vision of fair and equal criminal justice." The laser focus on due process created a situation where "the chief subject of criminal litigation became the definition of procesures based on the Bill of Rights," or the "process by which the defendant was arrested, tried, and convicted"; this siphons "the time of attorneys and judges away from the question of the defendant's guilt or innocence." All this laid the foundation for a "less accurate system of criminal adjudication."
"Too much of what you saw stuck to you, and if you let your emotion spill out, you were only marked as weak. The next victim. So you parked your emotions as far away as possible. Some small part remained, nagging away. But you ignored it."
"The law was a complicated mechanism; right and wrong, blame and accountability, injury and redress were all fed into one end of a convoluted process and came out the other bent beyond recognition."
"The current structure of the American legal system, besides being ill equipped to handle claims of innocence, also fails to deal with the fallout of exonerations. Justice in its most basic terms is about spotlighting responsibility. This has been a function of the modern state since it emerged after the Middle Ages. In Canada and European countries, a wrongful conviction can trigger an investigation into what went wrong. But the American justice system repeatedly fails to fully analyze its own mistakes and abuses. In wrongful convictions, lawsuits and case settlements have become common, but the system itself has little inclinations to push deeper with a detailed inquisition into how it could break down so catastrophically."
"There's every reason to believe the number of innocent men and women sitting in American prisons is far larger than we suspect. This has everything to do not only with how our legal system has developed over the last sixty years, but how American culture itself has shifted-changes legible in Cleveland's own story."
"The American criminal justice system isn't wired for claims of innocence. The mechanisms just aren't there, and the reasons why run deep. Much of it lies in the basic decentralized setup: each of the fifty states has its own criminal justice system; the federal courts run parallel to the local judiciary. Together, this creates a mess of overlapping jurisdictions and crisscrossing legal avenues, counter-case law and precedent and political leanings- a lot of white noise often drowning out real pleas for help."
"As I began digging into Kwame's case, I realized this was a story that highlighted all the major issues marking Cleveland's history, the same mix of politics, race, and law that has stained and steered every American city in the last seventy years. Yet for all the historical and personal pain his story contained, there were also lights leading forward. This story is about more than three lives unjustly stolen; it's also about how a city can finally face down-and fix-its ugly past."
"For twenty-eight years he had told people his story, only to watch them dismiss it as improbable. The work of an overactive, self-serving imagination. A denial of guilt. A criminal's bullshit. So after leaving prison, he stopped talking about his past."
"The reason: the Castle Doctrine, a stand-your-ground-style law cooked up by the National Rifle Association and spoon-fed to the Republican-controlled state legislature, part of the national creep to expand gun laws."
"Any urban studies professor worth tenure will tell you that from a governance standpoint, a regional, countywide authority is the best political structure for handling the civic challenges presented by postindustrial America-the challenges aimed directly at Northeast Ohion's head. A regional government can rule based on the interests of the entire region, rather than the narrower goals and needs specific to cities. But the Cleveland area had fended off any political rethink because of the detente between county and city-between white and black. Cleveland was left to black politicians. The county stayed with white suburbanites, Any strong regional government would dilute the sway of the former and dump urban problems on the latter. It was a mutually beneficial balancing act."
"In my experience," the professor said, "racism isn't just institutional, or even outright, blatant expressions of bigotry. It is a lack of empathy."
"So, as recent Cleveland history attests, there's no one weak spot in the armor: the fatal errors behind a wrongful conviction can come at any point in the process-from misguided detectives to belligerent prosecutors to lying experts on the government payroll."
"The courage of a sixteen-year-old girl to keep facts straight under that full-court press must have been considerable. Then to go to trial, telling her story while trying to fend off hostile assaults and embarrassing innuendo ("Do you go on many dates, Karen?" from prosecutors-the kind woman I was speaking with had shown serious resolve as a teenager."
"It would have been easier for Kwame if the whole neighborhood had written him off as guilty-but for all these people to know the truth, and ignore it, and let three boys go to prison was a terrible thing for him to comprehend. More so now: staying tight-lipped as a child was understandable. But as an adult?
"In his 2011 book The Collapse of American Criminal Justice, the late Harvard legal scholar William J. Stuntz write that it was a grave mistake "to tie the law of criminal procedure to the federal Bill of Rights instead of using that body of law to advance some coherent vision of fair and equal criminal justice." The laser focus on due process created a situation where "the chief subject of criminal litigation became the definition of procesures based on the Bill of Rights," or the "process by which the defendant was arrested, tried, and convicted"; this siphons "the time of attorneys and judges away from the question of the defendant's guilt or innocence." All this laid the foundation for a "less accurate system of criminal adjudication."
"Too much of what you saw stuck to you, and if you let your emotion spill out, you were only marked as weak. The next victim. So you parked your emotions as far away as possible. Some small part remained, nagging away. But you ignored it."
"The law was a complicated mechanism; right and wrong, blame and accountability, injury and redress were all fed into one end of a convoluted process and came out the other bent beyond recognition."
"The current structure of the American legal system, besides being ill equipped to handle claims of innocence, also fails to deal with the fallout of exonerations. Justice in its most basic terms is about spotlighting responsibility. This has been a function of the modern state since it emerged after the Middle Ages. In Canada and European countries, a wrongful conviction can trigger an investigation into what went wrong. But the American justice system repeatedly fails to fully analyze its own mistakes and abuses. In wrongful convictions, lawsuits and case settlements have become common, but the system itself has little inclinations to push deeper with a detailed inquisition into how it could break down so catastrophically."
July 25, 2019
I approached this book with trepidation. Umm, Bad City. Not sure I want to go there. Prologue, though, with its intriguing figures of speech, led me on. Book is about the longest wrongful convictions in history, about an author-reporter (Swenson) who's dogged (and loving) probing helped bring about justice (indeed, without his intensive concern, three wronged men might still be languishing in prison -- even beyond the nearly four decades two of them served). As the story unfolds, Swenson offers viewpoints about how blacks are isolated from levers of power, about racial disparity, police violence and injustice, about confusing and convoluted laws; and also about Cleveland's political, economic and criminal justice history and it's rebirth. Not so much "bad city" anymore. Swenson is a top-notch writer, a thorough reporter. I loved his narrative.
March 18, 2019
This is the story of three African American men who were wrongly convicted of murder based on the testimony of a 12-year-old boy from their neighborhood, despite testimony to the contrary and lack of physical evidence pointing to their guilt. Sentenced to death but ultimately moved off death row after Ohio's death penalty was declared unconstitutional, they spent decades behind bars before one was released, and then moved heaven and earth to gain his brother's and childhood friend's release as well. This is a story of how such convictions can be obtained when police fail to do their job correctly but instead act illegally as well as aided and abetted by corrupt prosecutors. Even judges take part adding to the mix with sloppy and lazy judicial practices. Nothing can give these men back the years they lost or make up for what they endured in the prison system but money does help. However, it does not solve the real problem, looking at what caused their wrongful convictions and punishing those that took part in that effort. Until we as a nation start looking at those who do this, we will not move forward. This book makes a compelling argument for this to happen.
May 19, 2019
Our justice system can be pretty messed up at times. There is pressure to deliver a perpetrator. Pressure of self preservation. Pressure to do what we think is right. But sometimes we get it wrong. In 1970s Cleveland, the justice system got it wrong when three men were convicted of a murder based on the eyewitness testimony of one boy. Well-researches and reported, this isn’t just a story of those three men. It’s also a story of our justice system at large, a story about race, and a story of redemption.
April 22, 2019
Good narrative nonfiction about the longest wrongful conviction in America. Set in Cleveland, the author explains the neighborhoods and government that sets up this tragedy. Well written and interesting.
April 14, 2019
Anyone that’s originally from or currently living in Cleveland should read this book.
June 24, 2019
Excellent history of Cleveland’s racial issues as well as social injustice. If you like « When They See Us » by Ava Devaney, you can continue the infuriating history of injustice for black and brown people.
August 5, 2020
I thought this book was excellent. The author does a great job telling two stories - one about the tragic wrongful convictions and one about the history of policing in Cleveland. Hard to believe stuff like this can happen and it’s certainly topical given all the recent focus on police brutality and corruption
April 12, 2021
Very journalistic, would have loved to read this story from a more sociological or activist lens but very interesting and informative for what it was!
March 17, 2019
Excellent. I had the privilege of meeting the author at a local bookstore event. This is a story every American (particularly white Americans) should read and consider as it provides a sad and scary look into pieces of our justice system that are broken. I loved the author’s approach in not only outlining the details of these wrongful convictions but also juxtaposing issues of race and the history of his own hometown, Cleveland. Insightful and enraging-this book reminds us that we have a long way to go for a better criminal justice system and cities that value equity and equality for ALL its citizens.
April 1, 2019
If you’re from Cleveland, like many places, you love your city with ferocity yet are extremely critical of it. This dive into 1970s-1980s culture and politics of Cleveland allow someone who grew up at the time in this town to understand what we didn’t then. Most importantly it shows, devastatingly clearly, how we got here.
April 26, 2019
Stunning. I kept having to stop because I was so angry. It's absolutely worth reading for anyone with compassion and a heart for justice.
March 16, 2019
Good kids, bad city is a beautifully written look into the murder convictions of three young black men. Sentenced to death in 1975 for the murder of a local, white store owner, Ricky Jackson, Ronnie Bridgeman, and Wiley Bridgeman were thrown away, products of a justice system that was not capable of judging minority defendants fairly. Good kids, bad city examines the case itself as well as the city of Cleveland and the factors that played into the convictions of the Bridgeman’s and Ricky Jackson. The story highlights truly shocking treatment of black community members back in the 1960’s-70’s. We want so hard to believe that the justice system is set up to weed out the innocent and ensure proper justice, but this novel highlights the reality from the expectation. A must read.
July 21, 2019
Exceptionally well written and well researched book. Quick and easy read.
Just another in a long line of non-fiction novels shedding light on the corruption and failures of our jurisprudence system. Read and digest. We must stand up and fix this mess.
Just another in a long line of non-fiction novels shedding light on the corruption and failures of our jurisprudence system. Read and digest. We must stand up and fix this mess.
July 30, 2019
It’s truly unfathomable for me to think about the time these men spent falsely incarcerated—more than my current lifetime. I could only cry. And to think, these are just three out of an unknown, untold number who have yet to have their story told.
January 16, 2021
Excellent book about so much wrong with our justice system.
October 20, 2019
Excellent and important book, equal parts history and analysis of the present. Well worth your reading time.
December 6, 2020
I have found the story of Ricky Jackson to be one of the most compelling stories I have ever heard, since I first learned about him, shortly after his release. I had the distinct honor of hearing him speak at John Carroll University, and his first hand account made an indelible impact on my heart and conscience. I have followed and supported the Innocence Project as a result.
This book tells the story of three black teens who were wrongfully convicted of the killing of a white salesman at a corner store in Cleveland in 1975. These men, Ricky Jackson and Wiley and Ronnie Bridgeman (Ronnie ultimately changed his name to Kwame Ajuma), spent their entire adult lives in prison for this crime, one they had absolutely nothing to do with.
In addition to telling the story of the lives of these men, the author does an amazing job creating the context in which this happens, describing multiple facets of American racism and the specifics of corruption in Cleveland that led to the arrests and convictions. These issues have not been resolved, and in fact have been inflamed in years since. Tamir Rice, a 12 year old black child holding a toy gun, was killed by a Cleveland police officer the day after Ricky Jackson and Wiley Bridgeman were set free, which was only about a year after the beginning of the Black Lives Matter movement.
My personal difficulty with the book was that I so earnestly wanted to know the stories of the men, I found myself skipping the sociological survey that made up the intervening chapters. I went back to read them later and found them to be important and necessary context, but as an impatient reader, those chapters initially bogged me down.
Additionally, when I heard Ricky Jackson speak in person, he shared his experience of meeting Ed Vernon in person and coming to forgiveness and peace with him. For me, it was the most unexpected and incredible aspect of his life story, and seemed to be the main reason Jackson was able to move forward. I wonder why Swenson left it out of this book?
I wish everyone could come to understand the issues written about here. Should it be required reading? Yes. It will go under the Christmas tree this month for many in my circle.
This book tells the story of three black teens who were wrongfully convicted of the killing of a white salesman at a corner store in Cleveland in 1975. These men, Ricky Jackson and Wiley and Ronnie Bridgeman (Ronnie ultimately changed his name to Kwame Ajuma), spent their entire adult lives in prison for this crime, one they had absolutely nothing to do with.
In addition to telling the story of the lives of these men, the author does an amazing job creating the context in which this happens, describing multiple facets of American racism and the specifics of corruption in Cleveland that led to the arrests and convictions. These issues have not been resolved, and in fact have been inflamed in years since. Tamir Rice, a 12 year old black child holding a toy gun, was killed by a Cleveland police officer the day after Ricky Jackson and Wiley Bridgeman were set free, which was only about a year after the beginning of the Black Lives Matter movement.
My personal difficulty with the book was that I so earnestly wanted to know the stories of the men, I found myself skipping the sociological survey that made up the intervening chapters. I went back to read them later and found them to be important and necessary context, but as an impatient reader, those chapters initially bogged me down.
Additionally, when I heard Ricky Jackson speak in person, he shared his experience of meeting Ed Vernon in person and coming to forgiveness and peace with him. For me, it was the most unexpected and incredible aspect of his life story, and seemed to be the main reason Jackson was able to move forward. I wonder why Swenson left it out of this book?
I wish everyone could come to understand the issues written about here. Should it be required reading? Yes. It will go under the Christmas tree this month for many in my circle.
July 15, 2019
This was a fascinating audiobook. I appreciated how the author wove Ricky, Wiley, and Ronnie (Kwame)'s story into the history of Cleveland. As a NE Ohio transplant, I learned a great deal not only about this case, but also the area that I now call home.
April 8, 2019
A poignant, yet inspirational story about the significance of criminal justice reform set in America's rust belt.
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