HEAVY JUSTICE

The Indianapolis special prosecutor who put heavyweight boxer Mike Tyson in prison for rape offers a trial recap full of interesting inside details. Aided by Roberts (History/Purdue; Jack Dempsey, 1974), Garrison, in the first quarter of the book, reconstructs the tangled early investigation of Tyson's July 1991 date rape of Desiree Washington, a teenage contestant in the Miss Black America pageant. Garrison's narrative gains momentum as he himself joins the case, concluding in his own mind that the intention of Desiree (as she's called throughout the book) in her late-night visit to Tyson's hotel room was innocent, not gold-digging. Energized for the fight, Garrison grills Tyson's former associate Jose Torres, who says a master boxer like Tyson can lie with conviction, and questions fellow prosecutors about Tyson's lawyer, Vincent Fuller, who successfully defended would-be presidential assassin John Hinckley. He offers much insight on trial strategy, including facing prospective jurors, eliciting powerful testimony from Washington, and cross-examining the confident Tyson, whose lawyers took the awkward tack of arguing that the defendant was so crude any woman would have known what she was getting into. Tyson got six years, and his appeals have so far failed. Garrison doesn't shy away from the racial overtones of the case, noting the ``enclave mentality'' of some black Tyson defenders, but he could have done more to question jurors about the case and to discuss Washington's civil litigation against Tyson. If a bit self-serving and understandably incomplete, a solid and readable account of a controversial case.