Down the River unto the Sea by Walter Mosley

A new character; Joe King Oliver, private eye and former cop.  He was setup with a woman who then filed a complaint complete with video.  It’s 13 years later and he hasn’t forgotten that they showed the tape to his wife while they had him in an interrogation room, nor the fact that she wouldn’t post bail and left him to the tender mercies of prejudiced cops and felons he had put away.  She immediately divorced him.

Now he has a client on death row.  He was framed by the same cops.  An assistant attorney brought the case to him.  His daughter insisted that he take the case.  But he needs help.  And he finds it in the form of a man he’d caught escaping but had no evidence.  When called upon to testify in court, he refused to lie to convict the man.  Now that man, a killer with extended resources is helping Joe break a man out of prison on death row.

Mosley writes in first person, getting in the head of his protagonist so the reader becomes vested in his success.