Injustice Town: Rick Tulsky in conversation with Cynthia Tucker

Join us for an evening with Rick Tulskey to discuss his new book Injustice Town: A Corrupt City, a Wrongly Convicted Man, and a Struggle for Freedom. He'll be in conversation with Cynthia Tucker. This event is free and open to the public, but registration is requested.

44th & 3rd will be our bookstore partners for this event! Preorder the book from them, or purchase one on site at the event.

Praise for the Book:

“Yet another maddening, frustrating, overwhelming, outrageous, and unbelievable story of corrupt justice in America. This one, though, is handled by Rick Tulsky, a dogged investigator, journalist, lawyer, advocate, and gifted writer.” —John Grisham, worldwide bestselling author of The Firm
and Framed

"Injustice Town is the unforgettable chronicle of how an innocent man spent half his life in prison, doomed by a justice system contorted by corrupt cops, incompetent lawyers, a compromised judge and intimidated witnesses.”
—Bill Marimow, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner, former Editor-in-Chief of The Philadelphia Inquirer

About the Book:

When the bodies of two Black men were found sitting with a crackpipe in a parked car in a rundown section of town in 1994, it seemed just another day in Kansas City, Kansas. The swift arrest and conviction of a seventeen-year-old Black kid from a broken home raised no eyebrows either. And yet, thirty years later, Lamonte McIntyre would prove to be the David that took down the Goliath of corruption that had long controlled the city’s power structure and enveloped the city’s justice system. But the effort to prove Lamonte’s innocence opened a Pandora’s box. Before it was over, the fight to win Lamonte’s exoneration exposed corrupt police and prosecutors, incompetent court-appointed defense lawyers, and a judge who violated ethical standards by his secret past relationship with the prosecutor, whom he favored in his rulings. Injustice Town follows Lamonte’s case from its harrowing beginning to its triumphant end and beyond, including the legal tsunami that came in its wake, that engulfed prosecutors, attorneys, and judges. Most shockingly, the lead cop on the case was indicted by the Department of Justice for the widespread abuses he had committed years earlier on women in the Black community of Kansas City Kansas. Abuses documented by Lamonte’s team. The criminal case ended, literally, with a bang, denying Lamonte and those whom the detective hurt, the chance for them to seek their own justice. Rick Tulsky, a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist, goes beyond the courthouse, exposing the ways in which corruption flourished for decades in an erstwhile quiet Midwest town, a town once dedicated to justice and equality. A lawyer by training as well as a reporter, Tulsky's narrative not only brings Lamonte's story to vivid life, it will empower cities, counties, states, and everyday citizens with a blueprint for equal justice. At a time when the federal government is abdicating its responsibility for demanding fairness and justice, it is up to states, local governments, and we the people to look for ways they can act. Vivid and unforgettable, Injustice Town tells the story of one man and shows us a vision of what a better future could be.

About the Author:

Rick Tulsky was the co-founder of Injustice Watch and served as editorial director until he retired in 2020. Before starting Injustice Watch in 2016, Rick was the founding director of Medill Watchdog, a program at Northwestern University’s journalism school to undertake collaborative projects on systemic problems while mentoring students in such work. Rick previously worked at the Jackson (Miss.) Clarion Ledger, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Los Angeles Times, the San Jose Mercury News and the Center for Investigative Reporting. His work has received more than two dozen national awards including a Pulitzer Prize, and has been a nominated finalist in two other years.

About the Moderator:

Cynthia Tucker is a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist and co-author with Frye Gaillard of The Southernization of America: A Story of Democracy in the Balance. Tucker has worked as a Washington-based political columnist for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and, before that, as the newspaper’s editorial page editor. After leaving the newspaper, Tucker was named a Charlayne Hunter-Gault writer-in-residence at the University of Georgia. She is currently journalist-in-residence at the University of South Alabama. In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, Tucker has won a number of awards, including the Harper Lee Award as best Alabama writer in 2022.