Guilty By Popular Demand: A True Story of Small-Town Injustice

The townsfolk of Logan, Ohio, a mined-out area of the Appalachian foothills, cheered as an innocent man was convicted and sent to death row. The occasion was the conviction of Dale N. Johnston. His trial ended nothing; the tragedies had just begun. What really happened on that bitter cold day in January 1984 was the total collapse of the local criminal justice system.

It began with a lovers’ quarrel. On October 4, 1982, Johnston’s stepda...