The Other Side of Prospect

August 1, 2022
Journalist Dawidoff (The Catcher Was a Spy) interweaves social history, true crime, and biography in this sprawling report on the 2006 murder of a grandfather in New Haven, Conn. Dissecting decades of racial and class divisions in his hometown, Dawidoff details how racism and deindustrialization helped transform New Haven’s blue-collar Newhallville neighborhood from a stepping-stone to the middle class into a “forgotten community” plagued by gun violence. It was in Newhallville that Pete Fields was killed in August 2006, shot point blank while sitting in his car. Bobby (no last name given), a 16-year-old who hung out on a local drug corner but was not involved in street violence, was brought in for questioning by the police and—after hours of aggressive interrogation without the presence of his parents or an attorney—confessed to the murder. Sentenced to 38 years in prison, his conviction was set aside in 2015, when the chief state’s attorney concluded that police had falsified records and ignored evidence pointing to another culprit. Dawidoff stuffs the account with statistics on violent crime, digressions into the Great Migration and the history of New Haven, deep dives into street culture and police interview techniques, and intricate biographical sketches. Though meandering at times, it’s a searing portrait of injustice in America.