Convicted: A Crooked Cop, an Innocent Man, and an Unlikely Journey of Forgiveness and Friendship
by Jameel Zookie McGee, Andrew Collins, Mark A. Tabb
Why You'll Love This
A Black man wrongfully imprisoned and the white cop who framed him became friends — and neither of them planned it that way.
- Great if you want: a true story of justice, race, and unexpected grace
- The experience: raw and emotionally direct — reads fast but stays with you
- The writing: alternating first-person accounts let both men indict and redeem themselves
- Skip if: faith-based framing feels intrusive to your reading experience
About This Book
What happens when the man who destroyed your life becomes someone you call a friend? That's the impossible question at the heart of this book, which follows Jameel McGee—wrongfully arrested and imprisoned on charges a corrupt officer fabricated—and Andrew Collins, the cop who put him there. Neither man emerged from the experience unscathed, and neither found an easy path forward. What makes their story remarkable isn't just that their lives crossed again, but what they chose to do when they did. It's a book about race, power, and the kind of forgiveness that costs something real.
What sets this apart is its dual-voice structure: McGee and Collins each tell their own side, sometimes covering the same events from opposite vantage points. That choice creates an unusual tension on the page—you hold both perspectives at once, which is uncomfortable in exactly the right way. The writing is plain and unguarded, free of the polish that can make memoir feel performed. Co-author Mark Tabb keeps things moving without softening the harder edges, and the result is a story that feels genuinely lived rather than neatly packaged.