Desire Street

"Jed Horne, the city editor of The Times-Picayune of New Orleans, follows each twist and turn of Mr. Kyles's legal ordeal, relying on a mountain of court transcripts and interviews with many of the people involved in the trial, including Mr. Kyles . . . The facts speak for themselves in this compelling portrait of life, death, and the justice system at the bottom of the social scale."—William Grimes, The New York Times

"Relying on his years as a reporter 'working the wrong side of the tracks,' Horne spins out the moving saga of the 25-year-old Kyles—an underemployed black man living on the fringe of the law with his common-law wife and their four children . . . Horne, who is white, paints . . . an accurate portrait of a poor, black subculture. He has the same feel for the street as George Pelecanos, a Greek who writes about the seamy, largely black, side of Washington, D.C., to great acclaim. Horne narrates an early meeting in which he calls himself 'a honky' to Kyles and has the good grace to tell us Kyles laughed in possible derision."—Rebecca Porter, Trial

"What Jed Horne does in this book is show you a right and wrong that runs beside guilt and innocence like the New Orleans streetcar runs beside heavy traffic. In a state where the lines of the law have blurred into wrongdoing for two centuries, Horne shows what can happen when a rush to convict overrides the protections of the system. Grippingly written."—Rick Bragg, author of All Over but the Shoutin

"Jed Horne forces you to look into the dark heart of justice in America and defies you to look away. Desire Street is a tour de force of the storyteller's art—a profoundly insightful book deserving of the highest praise."—Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking

"This is a breathtaking true crime story that is at once the portrait of a complex city, a finely drawn gallery of memorable characters, and a passionate inquiry into the ever-thorny ambiguities of race. It's destined to become a New Orleans classic and to provoke a wide-ranging discussion about some of our most deeply held platitudes."—Andrei Codrescu, author of Wakefield

"Only in New Orleans could a true story like this read so much like a novel or have such an amazing cast of colorful characters. Jed Horne has produced a fascinating tale about a man accused of a murder that is more complex than it seems, and a system that almost railroaded him into the electric chair. Anyone who cares about race and the justice system must read it." —Walter Isaacson, author of Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

"Desire Street is more than an important and resonant tale of race and crime—it is a page-turner, with a complex and magnetic criminal at its heart. It isn't easy to put this book down."—Daniel Bergner, author of In The Land of Magic Soldiers

"Behind its devil-may-care front for tourists, New Orleans is troubled by a long history of corrupt law enforcement and neighborhoods afflicted with crime. Jed Horne knows this bizarre city, and he has delved into its darkest corners for this compelling story of murder, betrayal, false witness, and official connivance."—Curtis Wilkie, author of Dixie

"A highly readable legal drama and story of desire and revenge, this book will grab you from the first page; more important, through Horne's accurate depiction of the tormented lives of Southern blacks, we begin to understand their fear, rage, and desperation. From understanding comes hope for change."—Christine Wiltz, author of The Last Madam: A Life in the New Orleans Underworld

"In the fall of 1984, Delores Dye, a housewife and grandmother, was shot and killed in a grocery store parking lot in New Orleans. Four days later, Curtis Kyles was arrested and charged with the crime. Horne (city editor, the Times-Picayune) traces the case in detail as Kyles is tried five times for the murder and ends up on death row for 14 years, maintaining his innocence throughout. His first trial ended in a deadlock, which resulted in a mistrial. In the second, he was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. Eleven years later, his appeal case went before the U.S. Supreme Court, and he was granted a reversal. In both the third and the fourth trials, the jury was deadlocked and the case declared a mistrial. In 1998, after a fifth jury failed to reach a verdict, District Attorney Harry Connick (Sr.) conceded defeat, and Kyles was set free. Over the course of the five trials, it came out that Kyles had been framed by an acquaintance and that police and prosecutors may have been complicit. This interesting and well-written book is a worthy purchase for large public libraries, especially where there is local interest."—Library Journal

"The city editor of the New Orleans Times-Picayune analyzes an extraordinary sequence of events that turned a cut-and-dried murder case into a protracted, racially tinged mangling of due process. Horne's first book opens with a grisly recounting of the 1984 murder of white housewife and grandmother Delores Dye, accosted in an outlying section of a supermarket parking lot and summarily shot in the head, apparently for purposes of robbery and carjacking. There were eyewitnesses, one close enough to be terrified for his own life, and in due course a known drug dealer named Curtis Kyles was arrested and brought to trial. This is not a straightforward retelling; from the outset Horne lets the story marinate in redolent language as poverty, hopelessness, and a daily diet of black-on-black crimes seep into the picture from Kyles's flat on Desire Street in the infamous Ninth Ward. Kyles was brought to trial twice, convicted, and sat on Death Row for more than a dozen years through an unprecedented three subsequent trials while noted District Attorney Harry Connick (Sr.) marshaled his minions to reshape a capital case that a jury might buy. During the ordeal, rumors surfaced: Kyles was actually set up by his opposite number in a love triangle; the cops knew about it and went along, 'inclined to cut corners in the name of getting another nigger off the street.' The rumors gained plausibility from New Orleans' well-known proclivity for extremes in good and bad times, not to mention its endemic political corruption. After 14 years, with the case still essentially unsolved, Kyles was released. Horne sums up the story as a study in 'the persistence of a determined prosecutor [and] the persistence of racism in the post-segregation South,' with the objective of justice for Delores Dye long since relegated to oblivion."—Kirkus Reviews