White for One Night

Involved in criminal activities from the age of fourteen, Lionel Raymond Williams was no cloud-scrubbed angel. But when the state of California indicted him for the murder of Hollywood actor Sal Mineo, the evidence against him seemed dubious at best. Police artists' renderings of the killer-compiled from no fewer than five eyewitnesses-depicted a lithe white man with high cheekbones and blond curls that draped down to his shoulders. That man could not have looked less like Williams. But a movie star had been slain, and somebody had to pay. "White for One Night" tells, for the first time, Ray Williams's side of the story, revealing the utter failure of the American justice system to grant a fair trial to a young black man.