For ten years before Rubin "Hurricane" Carter's death, he and his friend
and coauthor Ken Klonsky had been working to help free another
wrongfully convicted man, David McCallum. McCallum was eventually
exonerated and freed after serving twenty-nine years in prison. This is
the story of how Carter and Klonsky, along with a group of committed
friends and professionals, managed to secure McCallum's release. It
details their many struggles, from founding an innocence project to take
on the case, finding lawyers willing to work pro bono, and hiring a
private detective to sift through old evidence and locate original
witnesses, to the most difficult part: convincing members of a deeply
flawed criminal justice system to reopen a case that would expose their
own mistakes when all they wanted to do was ignore the conflicting
evidence. A new district attorney willing to reexamine the case, a
documentary film, and an op-ed piece in which Carter, on his deathbed,
made a plea for McCallum's release finally turned the tide of justice.