In this Oct. 13, 2017, file photo, Lamonte McIntyre, who was imprisoned for 23 years for a 1994 double murder in Kansas that he always said he didn't commit, walks out of a courthouse in Kansas City, Kan., with his mother, Rosie McIntyre, after the district attorney dropped the charges. (Tammy Ljungblad /The Kansas City Star via AP, File)

The year that Lamonte McIntyre was freed after 23 years behind bars, reporter and lawyer Rick Tulsky heard about the case and knew he had to learn more.

McIntyre, as the Associated Press has reported, was convicted in a 1994 double homicide in Kansas City, Kansas, even though no physical evidence or motive tied him to the crimes. He was freed in 2017 after a prosecutor asked the court to vacate his convictions and to drop all charges.

Since then, Tulsky has worked to tell his story in a book — “Injustice Town: A Corrupt City, a Wrongly Convicted Man, and a Struggle for Freedom” — that he’ll be launching at The Raven Book Store in Lawrence on Tuesday. And McIntyre himself will be there to talk about his ordeal.

Tulsky told the Journal-World that he heard about McIntyre’s case while working for Injustice Watch, a news nonprofit that examines issues of equity and justice in the court system. He became “quickly engrossed” in studying the case, and soon realized how many questions there were.

Through McIntyre’s legal “odyssey,” Tulsky said, there were concerns about police corruption, overly aggressive prosecution, defense attorneys so negligent they were eventually disbarred and a judge presiding over the case who had a conflict of interest — a previously undisclosed affair with a prosecutor.

“Everything that can go wrong did,” Tulsky said.

Part of what Tulsky found so fascinating about the story was how many parts of the justice system weren’t working properly in McIntyre’s case. That gave him a chance “to write about each piece of the system” and hopefully provide a study of how to improve them.

The biggest failing of the criminal justice system, Tulsky said, is when there is “no accountability,” and the potential ways to hold the system accountable in Wyandotte County had “really broken down” by that point. While the book is mostly about McIntyre’s case and his fight for exoneration, Tulsky also traced corruption in Wyandotte County and how it can become endemic — going back as far as officials who would take bribes and “look the other way” for crimes related to alcohol sales when Kansas was a dry state.

In McIntyre’s case, the problems began right when he was arrested, Tulsky said. He said McIntyre was arrested hours after the killings despite the fact he was never at the murder scene, didn’t know the two men who had died and did not have a motive to murder them.

There were also problems involving the arresting officer, Roger Golubski. Later in Golubski’s career, he would be accused of sexually assaulting Black women and terrorizing those who tried to fight back, as the Associated Press reported. Golubski died in an apparent suicide in 2024 just before the start of his criminal trial.

Tulsky said the team of lawyers helping McIntyre were the ones who exposed the alleged misconduct by Golubski, and he said one of them who had a history of helping in wrongful conviction cases said in court during McIntyre’s case that Golubski was “the dirtiest cop he’d ever seen.”

Tulsky said he was thrilled that McIntyre could be at Tuesday’s launch event at the Raven to share his story. The discussion will also include Stephen McAllister, a former U.S. Attorney for the District of Kansas who teaches at the University of Kansas School of Law. Tulsky said McAllister will add an “interesting voice” to the discussion because he worked to curb prosecutorial misconduct during his time as U.S. Attorney and “learned a lot about overzealous prosecutors.”

While McIntyre’s story will be at the center of Tuesday night’s conversation, Tulsky said he hopes it will touch on other issues in the criminal justice system, too.

“Hopefully it won’t just be a story about a past problem, but a story on what happens when you don’t demand an accountable and fair system,” Tulsky said.

The launch event is free and will take place Tuesday at The Raven, 809 Massachusetts St., from 7 to 8 p.m. More information can be found at The Raven’s website.