The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town

Title:  The Innocent Man Author:  John Grisham Genre:  Mystery, Crime, Nonfiction Length: 435 pages (paperback) Sensitive Content:  None Rating:  3 out of 5

The Innocent Man is a non-fiction story of two men who were wrongly convicted of rape and murder in Oklahoma.

Ron Williamson was the youngest child and only son of his loving Christian family in Ada, Oklahoma.  He grew up playing street ball and became a star on his high school baseball team.  He played for several minor professional league teams hoping to make it to the majors, ultimately the Yankees.  A few injuries and health problems crumbled those dreams.  By his mid-20s Ron began showing signs of mental illness which was compounded by his heavy drinking and drug usage.

In 1982 Debbie Carter was brutally raped and murdered in her apartment in Ada.  The local police missed several items when conducting the investigation, including the individual who had been harassing Debbie the night of her murder.

While there was no credible physical evidence against Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz, they were arrested and charged with the rape and murder of Debbie Carter.  The case was built on jailhouse snitches, who had be coached by Bill Peterson, the prosecutor.  Dennis was sentenced to life in prison and Ron was sentenced to the death penalty.

Grisham details Ron's years on death row.  His mother and sisters never gave up on his innocence.  His lawyers filed appeal after appeal.  By the time of the final case, Ron was severely mentally ill as well as depressed by his wrongful conviction.  To add to this, the guards liked to torment the inmates, especially Ron.

Years after being in prison, DNA evidence showed that the two men were innocent.  Ron and Dennis were released from prison, but those who convicted them refused to apologize.  In fact the prosecution continued to believe that the two men were still suspects and might be retired if more evidence presented itself.

Reading this book caused me to go through a series of emotions.  It was frustrating to see some of the major misses of the police department.  I was angry that the prosecution continued to focus on two innocent men while the actual killer was completely missed.  I was sad for what Ron, Dennis and others had experienced.

While I enjoyed this book, it was long in places as Grisham went into a lot of detail about Ron's early life, baseball, injuries, horrible years on death row, etc.  While some of these items were needed to help tell the story, it caused me to skip pages here and there.