Convicted (Book Review)

I'm working on my #bucketlistproject, and I completed the reading portion of the list with reading a biography/autobiography/memoir. I'd heard about or seen this book somewhere, and felt compelled to read it, so I ordered in off good old Amazon and dug in.

Convicted: A Crooked Cop, An Innocent Man, and an Unlikely Journey of Forgiveness and Friendship by Jameel McGee and Andrew Collins tells a story that seems too good to be true, but it is not. It's real life. The book, as told from both Jameel's and Andrew's viewpoints, reads like a first hand story, giving perspective from both men. There are a few times it feels a little forced, like when Andrew tells about giving his testimony to Jameel the first time they met after prison, but maybe that is real life, too. After all, Andrew is now an ordained pastor working with Young Life.

I do think the title of the book is a bit of an oversell. Jameel was not completely innocent, and Andrew was not a completely crooked cop. Jameel made some poor choices that caused him to "get the book thrown at [him]" when Andrew falsely arrested him. Andrew clearly states that his pride and arrogance led him down a road that led him to accuse Jameel of something he didn't do, but that he had good intentions with her career as a cop. Those issues aside, the book is powerful, both from individual and relational perspectives. God pursued Jameel for years, but Jameel did not always pursue God. At Jameel's lowest point in prison, however, he had an encounter with God. "I...started listening to God" He writes (p. 108). "I listened to what he had said to me with the Bible verses and with the three little words that kept running through my head: Let it go. Finally, I chose to do just that. I let it go. I gave my anger and my desire for revenge over to him. All of it." Jameel did get released from prison early, but he didn't go on to have an easy life. He went on to homelessness and illness and still wanting to harm Andrew. God kept speaking, "Let it go," to him, however, and in a beautiful moment shared at the end of the book, it is Jameel who is speaking these words to Andrew. God truly did reconcile Jameel to himself, and to his brother in Christ, Andrew. (Read Colossians 1:20 about God's overwhelming ability to enact reconciliation).

Andrew is harsh on himself in this book. He did wrong, and he's brutally honest about it. He didn't reach out to God until he thought he might go to prison, and then he did get incarcerated. He feared losing his marriage, and his wife stuck with him, but it wasn't easy. He feared returning to his community and wanted to run, but he did not. Andrew stayed in his community, and then he found out he had imprisoned an innocent man, something he did not think he had done. The pain just kept on coming. Sure, he had "cooked the books," to get arrests, but he had always thought he'd sent the guilty away. Jameel was innocent. With the pain of confronting Andrew's past, however, came healing. Seeing him struggle to forgive himself, and forgive people who had hurt him is powerful. Reading about Jameel's role in setting an example of forgiveness is extraordinary.

This book is not perfect, but neither is real life. That is why I highly recommend this book. It issues a call to readers to be reconciled to God, and to each other. It shows that reconciliation between races (Jameel is black and Andrew is white, though they do not talk about that differences much) and between victims and aggressors is possible. If readers finish this story and are not convicted about the power of forgiveness, they might need to ask if they are being honest about their own struggles and failures. Nobody is perfect. We are all convicted to death for our sins. That is why we all need forgiveness and friendship, and from Jesus Christ most of all!