(Not) Guilty

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Steve Weinberg

On a February night ten years ago, Roger de la Burde never woke up from a nap on his sofa.

On a February night ten years ago, 60-year-old Roger de la Burde never woke up from a nap on his sofa in the living room of his estate along Virginia's James River. De la Burde, a tobacco company scientist with eccentric tastes and a questionable story that he had been a Polish count, held a gun in his cold, stiff hand. When his longtime companion, Beverly Monroe, found his body the next morning, she concluded he had committed suicide. So did the police and the medical examiner—at first.

How and why the authorities came to suspect a woman past 50 with an advanced college degree, a responsible job, three loving children, a sweet nature, and no criminal record of violence drives journalist John Taylor's book. Of course, not all murderers fit the typical profile, but Monroe was a particularly anomalous candidate. Ignorant of the case for years, Taylor saw a New York Times article about her appeal, became fascinated with the details, realized the events had received almost no coverage outside the Richmond media, contacted one of Monroe's daughters who is a lawyer, received documents from the appeal, and found himself vowing to write a book.

Ten years ago, despite what seemed the initial implausibility of the accusation, few people would have given any credence to the possibility that Monroe is innocent. She had motive, means, and opportunity to kill de la Burde. Although she originally denied that she was present at the estate when de la Burde died, after intense interrogation conducted repeatedly over a period of months by a driven police investigator, Monroe confessed that she had been in the living room when the gun went off, though she continued to deny that she had murdered her companion. Case closed, right?

Wrong. In the past ten years, more and more people have begun to acknowledge the problem of wrongful convictions. They account for only a tiny percentage of all criminal cases, to be sure, but the raw numbers are nonetheless staggering. On January 31, 2000, Illinois ...

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