Circumstantial Evidence: Death, Life, and Justice in a Southern Town

Pete Earley's The Hot House gave America a riveting, uncompromising look at the nation's most notorious prison—the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas—a book that Kirkus Reviews called a "fascinating white-knuckle tour of hell, brilliantly reported." Now Earley shows us a different, even more intimate view of justice—and injustice—American-style.

In Monroeville, Alabama, in the fall of 1986, a pretty junior college student was found murdered in the back of the dry cleaning shop where...