Green Fields: Crime, Punishment, and a Boyhood Between

Cowser (Dream Season) explores the 1979 murder of his former schoolmate Cary Ann Medlin and the trial and eventual execution of her killer, Robert Glen Coe. On the evening of September 1, 1979, eight-year-old Cary Ann disappeared while riding her bike with her stepbrother in Greenfield, Tenn., a town near Cowser's boyhood home. Her body was found less than a day later on the outskirts of town; she'd been raped and stabbed. Authorities quickly arrested Coe, then 23, and he confessed almost immediately. Despite his attorneys' attempts to plead insanity, Coe was sentenced to death. He remained on death row for over two decades while his sentence was appealed, overturned, reinstated, and briefly stayed, until he was finally executed on April 19, 2000, the first execution performed in Tennessee in 40 years. Cowser ably juggles the history of Coe's life and legal battle with his own peripheral connections to the case, raising a powerful examination about the lasting impact of violence and capital punishment in the Deep South. (Nov.)