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A searing anatomy of a New Orleans
murder trial and a system of justice gone wrong.
In a New Orleans supermarket parking lot
in the fall of 1984 ,two disparate lives become inextricably
bound for the next fourteen years. The first, the life of
Delores Dye, a white housewife and grandmother. The second,
a young black man with a gun in hand. Moments following their
maybe not so chance encounter, Mrs. Dye lay dead on the sunbaked
macadam, and the killer had made off with her purse, her groceries,
and her car. Four days later, following a tip, authorities
arrested a known drug dealer and father of five named Curtis
Kyles. Kyles would then be tried for Mrs. Dye's murder an
unprecedented five times, though he maintained his innocence
throughout each trial. Convicted and sentenced to death in
his second trial, he would spend fourteen years on death row.
After a fifth jury was unable to reach a verdict, New Orleans
Parish District Attorney Harry Connick, Sr., finally conceded
defeat and dropped the murder charge.
But the case slowly yielded a deeper drama:
The crime turned out to have been the side effect of an intricately
plotted act of revenge. That police and prosecutors may have
been complicit in the vengeance that framed Kyles cuts to
the heart of a system of justice for Southern blacks in the
era since lynch mobs were shamed into obsolescence. A compellingly
written legal drama that has at its heart passionate intrigue
and justice gone awry.
Jed Horne is city editor
of The Times-Picayune (New Orleans). This is his
first book.
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