“Chilling, heartbreaking, and ultimately inspiring. I urge you to read it.”—SISTER HELEN PREJEAN, author of Dead Man Walking CHARGED WITH THE RAPE AND MURDER of a nine-year-old girl in 1984, Kirk Bloodsworth was tried, convicted, and sentenced to die in Maryland’s gas chamber. Maintaining his innocence, he read everything on criminal law available in the prison library and persuaded a new lawyer to petition for the then-innovative DNA testing. After nine years in one of the harshest prisons in America, Kirk Bloodsworth became the first death row inmate exonerated by DNA evidence. He was pardoned by the governor of Maryland and has gone on to become a tireless spokesman against capital punishment. Bloodsworth’s story speaks for 159 others who were wrongly convicted and have since been released, and for the thousands still in prison waiting for DNA testing. “The reader will be swept along to an amazing and shocking conclusion that could never be believed as fiction.” —JOSEPH WAMBAUGH, author of The New Centurions “Unbroken by the horror and anguish of his ordeal, [Kirk Bloodsworth] has now dedicated himself to saving other innocents from the living hell he endured.” —SENATOR PATRICK LEAHY, ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee * CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR NOTEWORTHY NONFICTION, 2004 * ATLANTA JOURNAL CONSTITUTION BEST NONFICTION OF 2004