Fifty-nine days. That's how long Rennell Price has to live after spending 15 years on death row for the horrifying sexual assault and murder of a girl whose body was found floating in San Francisco Bay. But attorney Terri Paget has dedicated her life to fighting for people like Rennell Price. This time, Terri has a client she believes may actually be innocent, which means that an unpunished killer may still be free.Rennell, along with his older brother, Payton, was found guilty of the heinous crime, and the conviction has been upheld through one appeal after another. But as Terri spends time with Rennell and re-creates the events that put him on death row, she starts to understand the forces that shaped Rennell and the reason he has never been able to defend himself adequately.
As Terri prepares for a last appeal, she gets a new weapon for her battle; fresh evidence suggesting that another man, not Rennell, helped Payton commit the atrocity. But the grim machinery of capital punishment is already in motion. As more people are drawn into Terri's last-ditch battle, this much is clear: The serious doubts about Rennell's guilt may not be enough to save him.
Conviction raises issues of ethics, political expediency, and personal trauma that will shake readers to their core. Patterson illuminates the mysterious precincts between justice and truth, where the fate of one man involves not only his own life and the lives he has affected but the moral life of a nation.
