Lane is the author of the 1970 book "Arcadia" in which he details the effort to prove that James Joseph Richardson, a black migrant worker in Florida, had been falsely accused of killing his seven children. He was convicted of the murders through corrupt means used by the authorities involved. Richardson had been on death row for almost five years for the crimes, escaping execution by virtue of the Furman v. Georgia Supreme Court decision. Nineteen years after the book was published he received a hearing in which the charges were dropped thanks to the interventions of Lane and Miami's then- prosecutor, Janet Reno. Richardson was released from prison after 21 years, and Richardson's babysitter, though suffering from dementia, later confessed to the murders.