SOURCE: "Jeffrey MacDonald's New Jury," in The New York Times Book Review, March 19, 1995, pp. 31-2.

[Below, Sharkey reviews Fatal Justice: Reinvestigating the MacDonald Murders, in which the authors argue that Jeffrey MacDonald was wrongly convicted of murdering his wife and daughters.]

Writers who reconstruct major murder cases quickly discover that prosecutors and the police routinely botch certain things, especially during the initial chaos at a crime scene. Particularly when the suspect looks obviously guilty, investigators can get sloppy; they cut corners, conveniently overlooking the shreds of confoundingly contradictory evidence (or amazing coincidence) that almost always turn up.

When the accused can hire the best defense lawyers, these blunders can come back to torment prosecutors who don't have their cases nailed down tight. Red-faced investigators squirm on the stand under blistering cross-examination, and the ingredients of conspiracy theories pile up neatly beside the mixing bowl.

In Fatal Justice: Reinvestigating...