Excerpted from "Mean Justice" by Edward Humes, Pocket Star Books, 1999.

Sonia Jacobs is freed from death row in Florida, where she had been sentenced for the 1976 murders of two policemen at a highway rest stop. Prosecutors kept secret the fact that their star witness in the case - an alleged accomplice in the crime - had failed a lie-detector test. After being granted a new trial, Jacobs pleaded no contest in exchange for a sentence of timed served. Her codefendant, Jesse Tafero, did not fare so well; his execution had already been carried out in 1990, before evidence of prosecutorial misconduct surfaced.