This could well be the most important book ever reviewed in this journal. Certainly its lesson is trenchant for every Fellow the the Academy. The author, a lawyer, details an account of a criminal case which began in 1955 with the rape and murder of an 8-year-old girl in Canton, Ill. As absorbing as Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, he recounts the happenings from the time of the murder until the case against the convicted murderer is closed 16 years later. The story starts with the suspect coerced into a confession and continues with suppressed and falsified evidence by the prosecution, the defense being denied access to evidence or reports, a criminalist falsely testifying in court, an unstable and unreliable witness helped by the prosecution to render perjured testimony, and the suspect being convicted and sentenced to death.