In April 2014, Rubin “Hurricane” Carter died after a long battle with cancer. David McCallum was exonerated and freed two months later, after serving 29 years in prison. This is the story of how Carter and his friend and coauthor Ken Klonsky worked for ten years to help free the wrongfully convicted McCallum. It details their struggles—from founding an innocence project, to finding lawyers willing to work pro bono, to hiring a private detective to sift through old evidence and locate original witnesses, and the most difficult part, convincing members of a deeply flawed criminal justice system to reopen a case that would expose their own mistakes. It eventually took a new district attorney, a documentary film, and a New York Daily News op-ed written by Carter on his death bed to secure justice. Freeing David McCallum tells a tale of frustration, agony, and undying hope, and the miracle that resulted in David’s release. 

“After you read this gripping tale of a Brooklyn teenager coerced into falsely confessing and freed nearly thirty years later, you will not think about confession evidence or criminal investigations the same way.” —Brandon L. Garrett, author of End of Its Rope: How Killing the Death Penalty Can Revive Criminal Justice and Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong

“I was the judge who granted a writ of habeas corpus to Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter resulting in his freedom after serving nineteen years in prison for a wrongful conviction. After his release we became friends, and he often spoke of his commitment to obtain the release of David McCallum. Freeing David McCallum is the compelling true story of the exoneration of another man wrongly convicted. His miraculous release, after twenty-nine years, demonstrates that fortunately there are those among us who will devote themselves unsparingly to freeing the innocent.” —Judge H. Lee Sarokin, retired