Today, Tibbs sits in an Indiana prison serving a forty-year sentence for killing Rayna Rison. His conviction in 2014 was partly due to failures in his defense and evidence that the judge would not permit in the trial. But the fact that charges were dropped against McCarty and then filed against Tibbs speaks to the remarkable influence of politics on the criminal justice system in northwestern Indiana. It also shows how notorious cold cases can be used to concoct murder charges against an innocent man.
Submerged is the first book to fully examine the Rayna Rison murder in meticulous detail, fully solving the crime through clues the police overlooked. Drawing on countless interviews and a deep examination of the legal record, Hillel Levin tells the tragic story of a girl whose family and justice system failed to protect her. It also reveals the police and prosecutorial misconduct used to convict Tibbs.