What happened to Army veterans Mark Jones, Dominic Lucci and Kenny Gardiner on a January night in 1992 is almost impossible to believe. “It just blindsides you like a bolt of lightning,” said Lucci.
“You’re stunned and in shock,” said Jones.
Gardiner said, “One day you’re preparing to go before the promotion board, next day you’re fighting for your freedom.”
A chance encounter with a Savannah, Georgia, police officer investigating a murder cost each of them 26 years in prison for a crime they didn’t commit. “Why us? Why then?” said Lucci. “We had nothing in our lives that would even bring anybody to the assumption of that. No logical reason for us to have done any of that.”
Their arrest, conviction and fight for freedom is as dramatic as the plot of any legal thriller, says bestselling author John Grisham, who has written nearly 50 of them. “Everything is there: drama, suffering, injustice, you name it,” Grisham said.