Books for the U.S. about the Chad Evans case and other cases of Wrongful Conviction, and generally about wrongful conviction.

1. About the Chad Evans case - all available here online and on Amazon.com as paperbacks or in Kindle format.

Volume 1:  EYE CONTACT - The Mysterious Death in 2000 in Maine of Kassidy Bortner and the Wrongful Conviction of Chad Evans in New Hampshire 

Volume 2: (Amazon paperback and Kindle) Eye Contact, Volume 2: Letters 2010 from a Wrongly Convicted man in New Hampshire State Prison. 

 Volume 2: (.pdf copy)

Volume 3: (Amazon paperback and Kindle) Eye Contact, Volume 3: Letters 2011 from a Wrongly Convicted man in New Hampshire State Prison

 Volume 3: (.pdf copy)

      The paperback Edition of EYE CONTACT was published on November 9, 2011, the 11th anniversary of the death of Kassidy Bortner.  Posted

here is the E-COPY (.PDF) of the 699 page paperback edition.  As of 25 March 2012, these ERRORS  have been identified. Click here for CORRECTED COPY  of paperback (with the number of FALSE statements corrected on page 527.  This edition is available by writing to the Chad Evans Wrongly Convicted Committee, 71 Sullivan Street, Keene, NH 03431.

     The book is also now available on Amazon.com in a Kindle ecopy edition (@$3.00) or hard copy (@25.00)  See the Amazon page for the book. 

     Edition 2b of the 694 page ebook,  EYE CONTACT - The Mysterious Death in 2000 in Maine of Kassidy Bortner and the Wrongful Conviction of Chad Evans in New Hampshire was published  as revised as of September 25 2011.

      Draft Edition 2 of the 692 page ebook, EYE CONTACT was published online on August 10, 2011.  The first Draft Edition was published on July 18, 2011.  Click here for contents of .rtf file of EYE CONTACT - RTF and BOOK COVER

    The ebook explores what happened to Kassidy Bortner and how Chad Evans was wrongly convicted of abusing and murdering her.

    Even in this age of the Internet, the book is still a most powerful tool for informing the public. Newspapers and magazines and radio and TV and a web site all have their role, but a book is for the ages and it has oomph.

    The Chad Evans Wrongly Convicted Committee will work to get it to the people of New Hampshire and the U.S. in several ways:

    a. Ensure that each library in New Hampshire and the rest of the

        country has a copy.

    b.  Sales of books, the old-fashioned way.

    c.  Getting a copy online so people can see the entire text. 

    d. Downloading to ebook readers: IPAD, Kindle, Nook

    a. COPIES TO LIBRARIES

As soon as they are available, starting with the Maine and New Hampshire State Libraries.

     b. SALES

Even before commercial publishing, if that happens, we will be selling copies of the manuscript at $25.00 per copy, and no charge for an e-copy.  Please contact the Chad Evans Wrongly Convicted Committee  for your copy.

    A paperback edition is also available at the www.lulu.com  self-publishing site. 

   EYE CONTACT can be purchased at the following Maine and New Hampshire Bookstores

         Gulf of Maine Books, Brunswick, Maine

         Gibson's Bookstore, Concord, New Hampshire

         RiverRun Bookstore Portsmouth, New Hampshire

    c.  Online

The book will be available online (see above) and can be sent as attachment in two emails upon request.

     d. Downloading to ebook readers: IPAD, Kindle, Nook

IPAD - The .pdf file can be downloaded directly onto an IPAD.

Kindle -  To download the eBook onto the Kindle attach the file (eBook) to an email and send it to their Kindle email address (i.e. Morrison@kindle.com). In the subject line of the email type in CONVERT which will convert the pdf file to an Amazon file which will format the eBook so it is easily readable on the Kindle. Make sure their Kindle is online (i.e. WiFi or 3G) so when the file is converted it will download to their Kindle. For further instructions, go to: http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200375630  

Nook - Go to the Barnes and Noble website for a Video Tutorial on how to download a .pdf file onto a Nook.  The site is www.barnesandnoble.com/nook/video.asp#vid6

LULU - The Ebook is available at the www.lulu.com  self-publishing site. 

WATTPAD. available at the www.wattpad.com  self-publishing site, at EYE CONTACT at WATTPAD.COM,

SMASHWORDS  at the epublishing site for Sony E-Readers,

www.smashwords.com, where the book is located at

EYE CONTACT at Smashwords. 

2. Books about other cases of Wrongful Conviction - pre- exoneration.

Human Sacrifice by James P. Moore. The story of the Dennis Dechaine case

    in Maine.   (Alfred has a copy.)

Justice Denied: The Trial of Erik Rasmussen written by Erik, this is

   a powerful story of the murder in Connecticut of his wife.

3. Books about other cases of Wrongful Conviction - post exoneration.

A Criminal Injustice: A True Crime, a False Confession, and the Fight to Free Marty Tankleff by Richard Firstman and Jay Salpeter. 

Bloodsworth: The True Story of the First Death Row Inmate exonerated by DNA  by Tim Junkin.  This is about Kirk Bloodsworth, who was convicted of murdering a child in Maryland, and exonerated by DNA.

In 2011, Sarah Burns wrote the book, The Central Park Five, about the Central Park Jogger assault and rape case, and she and her father, Ken Burns, are working on a documentary.    All five teenagers convicted in the case were exonerated after they completed their sentences.

When Justice Fails : The David Milgaard Story   about one of Canada's

    most egregious cases.

Guilty until proven Innocent - by Don Connery.  This is the story of Connecticut's Peter Reilly case.

Until you are dead - is the book about Steven Truscott, another of  

    Canada's best known cases of wrongful conviction.

Exit to Freedom by Calvin O. Johnson and Greg Hampikian.  About

    Georgia's first DNA exoneree, and current member of the Georgia

    Innocence Project Board of Directors. 

4. Books about Wrongful Conviction and related subjects, generally.

ACTUAL INNOCENCE: Five Days to Execution, and Other

Dispatches from the Wrongly Convicted By Barry Scheck, Peter

Neufeld and Jim Dwyer

Actual Innocence: When Justice Goes Wrong and How to Make It 

Right by Peter Neufeld, Jim Dwyer and Barry Scheck. 

5. Books about Campaigns for Exoneration of the Wrongfully Convicted

Freeing the Innocent - How We Did It - Handbook for the Wrongfully

Convicted by Michael and Becky Pardue. This book is available only from

the publisher of Justice Denied, The Magazine for the Wrongfully

Convicted. 

Achieving Justice: Freeing the Innocent, Convicting the Guilty -

Report of the ABA Criminal Justice Section's Ad Hoc Innocence

Committee to Ensure the Integrity of the Criminal Process. 

(currently not available from Amazon.com, but is available from the

American Bar Association, at 800-285-2221.)

6.  Books about modern Justice, Generally

    Courtroom 302 - a year behind the scenes in an American Criminal

     Courthouse by Steve Bogira

         As with other books about justice, there are pages which ring true for supporters of Chad Evans.  On page 189, "There are certain kinds of cases where emotions override the facts", said Judge Locallo, who was featured in the book.  On page 157 is the story of how police would maintain a "street file" which was separate from the files which might be furnished to defense attorneys.  On Page 164, we learn of Frank Laverty, who investigated a case and was then stunned to learn that it had gone to trial of a wrong man.  He took the unusual action of seeking to correct the mistake to ensure that a wrongful conviction did not occur.  On page 343 begins the story of Dan Young and Harold Hill who were wrongfully convicted.  [See above, on this webpage.]

 "False Justice: Eight Myths That Convict the Innocent"   by Jim and Nancy Petro.  Jim is a former Attorney General of Ohio.  See the review of this book by Steven Weinberg,

"Eight Myths of Justice"

He wrote:

   In the 2006 U.S. Supreme Court ruling Kansas v. March, Justice David Souter and Justice Antonin Scalia conducted a public debate within their opposing written opinions. Discussing the fates of death row prisoners, Souter opined that in such high stakes cases, innocent men and women are too often found guilty.   

   The “unusually high incidence of false conviction” is probably caused by “the combined difficulty of investigating without help from the victim, intense pressure to get convictions in homicide cases, and the corresponding incentive for the guilty to free the innocent,” Souter wrote.
    Scalia countered that wrongful convictions are rare in capital cases because they “are given especially close scrutiny at every level, which is why in most cases many years elapse before the sentence is executed.”
    For 40 years, I have researched, written about and obsessed over wrongful convictions. Souter’s thinking—heavily reliant on the research of Samuel Gross, a University of Michigan law professor who has demonstrated that wrongful convictions are more prevalent than most law enforcement insiders understand—is spot-on. Scalia’s is misguided, informed by a judicial culture more interested in speedy convictions than thorough investigations.
    The law enforcement personage who recognizes the problem of false convictions is a rare and refreshing breed—and often comes from unlikely corners of the political ring. Republican politician Jim Petro, experienced an epiphany during his term as Ohio attorney general that surprised him, his wife Nancy and many of his supporters. The epiphany? Petro realized that a significant number of prisoners who say they are innocent are indeed innocent. He realized that wrongful convictions occur in multiple Ohio county courthouses and in federal courts. He realized that the number of wrongful convictions can be minimized, and that police, prosecutors, judges and defense attorneys can perform their jobs better. His newfound cause was well suited to his law-and-order way of thinking—when wrongful convictions occur, the actual perpetrators (murderers, rapists, burglars, etc.) go unpunished, and often murder or rape or burglarize again.
    In my years of research, I have heard only a few prosecutors acknowledge the breadth and depth of the problem. In his new book False Justice: Eight Myths That Convict the Innocent (January, Kaplan), Petro outdoes them all.
Most of the cases that raised red flags for Petro, and now benefit from his lawyering, are Ohio cases. Petro was especially gripped by the cases of Clarence Elkins, Michael Green and Roger Dean Gillispie, convicted felons whose exonerations in Ohio are completed or pending.
Petro and his wife, a business consultant, rely heavily on the Elkins, Green and Gillispie case studies in hope of dispelling eight “myths” about the criminal justice system:
•Everyone in prison claims innocence. Most inmates make no such claim because guilt is obvious. Lots of prisoners complain about police cutting corners or prosecutors offering overly harsh plea bargain terms, but rarely do they deny their crime completely.
•The American criminal justice system almost never convicts an innocent person. Nobody can know the census of innocent inmates. But hundreds of documented cases exist, and Petro, among others, suggests the number reaches into the tens of thousands.
•Only the guilty confess. False confessions show up in at least one quarter of documented wrongful convictions.
•Wrongful conviction is the result of innocent human error. Numerous cases have yielded evidence that police and prosecutors had reason to doubt the validity of the arrest, but made the arrest anyway.
•An eyewitness is the best testimony. Sometimes that is true, but numerous well-designed research studies suggest the odds of accurate eyewitness identification are no better than 50-50.
•Conviction errors get corrected on appeal. Appellate judges tend to side with the prosecution because finality is an overwhelming value within the court system.
•It dishonors the victim to question a conviction. In fact, many victims and their loved ones want the actual perpetrators to serve prison time.
•If the justice system has problems, the pros will fix them. In researching the more than 2,300 criminal justice jurisdictions across the United States, I have found that the pros almost never initiate the repairs. Instead, those repairs begin with innocence project advocates, journalists through their public investigations, law professors, and the rare state legislators and public officials willing to buck against the criminal justice establishment.
    Any well-informed primer on wrongful convictions is welcome. Even better is a primer by somebody like Petro, who has the credentials to move reform proposals to center stage.