Books on Wrongful Convictions
A curated reading list of 12 books exploring wrongful convictions, false imprisonment, and criminal justice reform — essential reads for families, advocates, and anyone committed to seeking justice.
These books highlight the personal struggles of the wrongfully convicted and expose systemic flaws in the justice system.
Non-Fiction
Wrongful Conviction: Law, Science, and Policy
This volume addresses issues of law, science, and policy related to wrongful convictions in the American system of justice — a comprehensive academic examination of how the system fails innocent people and what reforms are needed.
Non-Fiction
Convicting the Innocent: Prosecutions Go Wrong
Based on trial transcripts, Garrett's investigation into the causes of wrongful convictions reveals larger patterns of incompetence, abuse, and error throughout the criminal justice system — and what must change.
Non-Fiction
Examining Wrongful Convictions: Stepping Back, Moving Forward
The premise is that much can be learned by stepping back from individual cases to examine broader systemic issues — a research-driven look at patterns, causes, and potential reforms.
Non-Fiction
The Innocence Commission
DNA testing and advances in forensic science have shaken the foundations of the U.S. criminal justice system. Gould examines how innocence commissions work to identify and correct systemic failures.
New
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption
One of the most powerful books about the American legal system. Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, chronicles his work defending the condemned and the wrongly imprisoned — including the wrongful murder conviction of Walter McMillian.
New
Framed: Astonishing True Stories of Wrongful Convictions
In his first nonfiction since The Innocent Man, Grisham teams with Jim McCloskey of Centurion Ministries to share ten harrowing true stories of wrongful convictions — exposing tunnel vision, coached witnesses, junk science, and corrupt prosecutors. (2024)
New
The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row
Anthony Ray Hinton spent 30 years on Alabama's death row for murders he did not commit. This memoir of survival, hope, and ultimate exoneration is one of the most moving accounts of wrongful conviction ever written.
New
Actual Innocence
Founders of the Innocence Project, Scheck and Neufeld relate the stories of ten innocent men convicted by sloppy police work, corrupt prosecutors, jailhouse snitches, and mistaken eyewitnesses — and the heroic efforts to free them.
New
The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town
Grisham's only other work of nonfiction tells the story of Ron Williamson, a once-promising baseball player wrongfully convicted of murder and sent to death row in a small Oklahoma town — exonerated by the Innocence Project.
New
Picking Cotton: Our Memoir of Injustice and Redemption
A rape survivor misidentified Ronald Cotton in a lineup. He spent 10 years wrongfully imprisoned before DNA proved his innocence. Remarkably, Cotton and Thompson-Cannino co-wrote this book together — a powerful story of forgiveness and reform.
New
Blind Injustice: A Former Prosecutor Exposes the Psychology and Politics of Wrongful Convictions
A former hard-nosed prosecutor turned Ohio Innocence Project attorney explores the psychological weaknesses built into the criminal justice system — confirmation bias, memory malleability, and cognitive dissonance — that lead to wrongful convictions.
New
The Sing Sing Files: One Journalist, Six Innocent Men, and a Twenty-Year Fight for Justice
Emmy Award-winning NBC Dateline producer Dan Slepian chronicles his 20-year investigative pursuit to free six innocent men imprisoned in New York's Sing Sing prison — a gripping account of journalism's power to expose injustice. (2024)