The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town

Prompt delivery. Book in good condition as advertised. Overall satisfaction AOne!

I enjoyed nearly everything about this book, but the one thing I couldn’t get past was Grisham announcing what was about to happen before he explained it.

Grisham does it again. Only this time he makes us all see what can and does happen to innocent people in our so called Justice System.Being the webmaster for two websites for innocent men on death row opened my eyes to this horrible injustice done to so many.In telling the story of "The Innocent Man," the king of the legal thriller has put a human face on capital punishment and gambled with his audience. If you are expecting a breezy, true-crime read you won't find that here... but you will find a darker product, a well-crafted, meticulous study of a broken system. Grisham asks a nagging question: If wrongful convictions happen all the time, how do we know that the poison is flowing into the real killer's arm?"This is not a problem just in Oklahoma, far from it," Grisham writes. "Wrongful convictions occur every month in every state in this country, and the reasons are all varied and all the same -- bad police work, junk science, faulty eyewitness identifications, bad defense lawyers, lazy prosecutors, arrogant prosecutors."Before his descent into hell, Ron Williamson was a young man bursting with big-league promise, the next Mickey Mantle as the people around Ada, Okla., liked to say.Ron was drafted in 1971 by the Oakland A's a few months after graduating from high school. After a perfunctory stint in the minors, was headed for The Big Time.Ron's love of strip clubs & alcohol was as strong as his swing.By 24, his marriage was wrecked as well as his shoulder.Stripped of his uniform, Ron was either so depressed he couldn't get up off of his mother's couch or filled with manic energy. He moved from job to job and was twice accused of rape, but none of the charges stuck. What his devoted Pentecostal family didn't realize was that Ronnie was slowly losing his mind, beset by undiagnosed manic depression and schizophrenia.The hometown hero had turned resident creep, so when 21-year-old Debbie Carter was found raped and strangled in her Ada apartment in 1982, it was inevitable that the police would find their way to Ron Williamson.What shouldn't have been inevitable, Grisham argues, is the perversion of justice that followed.Though witnesses saw Debra Carter arguing with a man she knew hours before she was killed, that man was NEVER pursued as a suspect. Instead, detectives homed in on Williamson and his friend, Dennis Fritz.A bloody handprint on the bedroom wall of Debra Carter's didn't match Williamson or Fritz -- NOTHING at the scene did -- but the lack of hard evidence didn't stop prosecutors. They convicted the men using a BOGUS confession cobbled together from one of Williamson's tortured dreams, the perjured testimony of jailhouse snitches and "the junk science" of hair analysis.Williamson was clearly mentally ill -- he had to be dragged screaming & hollering from the courtroom -- but NO ONE consulted a psychiatrist to see if he was competent to stand trial.Grisham expertly dissects each judicial and constitutional outrage with cool precision."Once in the system, it's almost impossible to get out," Fritz told a reporter, "even if you are innocent." And that is the terrible truth Grisham lays bare. After DNA proved Williamson and Fritz hadn't killed Debbie Carter, the prosecutor announced that he still considered them suspects.Please, NEVER TRUST THE AUTHORITIES! TRUST THE EVIDENCE!

We're very happy with the story and how it was written

6-26-12: I'm about halfway through and trying to decide the merits of continuing. This isn't one of Grisham's better novels. The pace is way too slow.6-27-12: I just realized this is non-fiction. I just thought it was bad fiction storytelling, which seemed odd for Grisham. Now I actually feel offended that he took a horrendous real life situation and told it in such a way that I don't particularly care about the people or the events. This is poorly written and, in my opinion, is an injustice to the people who lived these events.6-28-12: Okay, to be fair, now that I know this is non-fiction the writing style makes more sense, though I still think it's poorly written. I feel empathy and interest in the characters and events now, but I'm not sure that is enough to make me want to continue to plod on, I'm trying though.6-29-12: I'm changing my rating from 1 star to 4 stars. Not so much for the writing but for the subject matter. The last 1/4 of the book flows better and the writing is much more compelling. I could feel the connection and humanity in the last 1/4 that seemed to be missing until then. Maybe Grisham intended that to correspond to the events, but that just made it difficult to engage with the story. I just feel that if the first 3/4 had been edited and revised in some way the whole book could have been more compelling. (In the author's note Grisham says he could have written 5,000 pages, and my thought was, "Thank God he didn't!") I do think that my not realizing it was non-fiction until 1/2 way through may have contributed to my not engaging with the story or the writing until later, so it's possible my early criticism is unwarranted. I think the subject matter is so important, I learned a lot, and was deeply touched by the story and the people who lived it. I'm glad to have learned what I learned from this book and will recommend that my son read it someday. The subject is important for any citizen who cares about fairness and justice, and the fallibilty of people at all levels of society.

John Grisham follows the story of Ron Williamson and others who were wrongfully convicted of a murder they didn't commit. How police wouldn't follow leads to other suspects because they felt they had their man. The judge in their trial wouldn't allow the defense to hire opposing expert witnesses and they were convicted on the flimsiest of evidence, that really wasn't evidence. This was before the advent of DNA. Ron Williams spent years on Death Row, and was finally granted a stay of exocusion just days before he was set to be exocuted. The Innocence Project was finally able to convince a judge to run his DNA, which didn't match the crime scene.The only thing that bugged me was the formatting for the Kindle version of this book. There were no paragraph indents of the the first line, like a normal book. I'm used to reading books, even for Kindle where the formatting looks like a "real" book. So it bugs me when no one takes the time to format the Kindle version the same way. Other than that, it was a very interesting story.

I didn't realise this was a true story until I was noticed that the style of writing was very different from the fictional stories that Grisham has written. This is a eye opening account of an utter miscarriage of justice where two men were sentenced to death for a murder they did not commit. The death penalty culture in the US is exposed as encouraging a conviction at all costs - to the point of ignoring other evidence as it does not correlate with the orifinal supposition of the investigators. This is dated - e.g. DNA were not available at the time of this conviction however, even in the absence of this it really does show how vulnerable people can be totally let down by system and egos. It was all the more relevant to me as I actually have a pen friend who is on death row - and whilst his conviction is presumably safe e.g. DNa evidence used this book allows us to question what motivations there are for having a a death penalty and for the treatment of those who are subject to a death sentence.

I bought this book years ago. I never finished it. I found it again tidying my kindle and thought how come I never finished a Grisham book? I began to reread; then it came back to me. This is not typical Grisham - it is a pretty dry read of a true story. Also the first 20% of the book contains a massively overlong biography of Ron Williamson, the main subject of the book, even down to his averages playing baseball. Yawn. Some may give up by that point.What saves this book is that it opens your eyes to injustice in the US before many convictions (not just those in this book) were overturned using DNA evidence.There is no rating for the story - this is fact or as good as (insight from interviews). It isn't fiction. In terms of how Grisham presents this then I struggle especially given the 5* messages and importance of the content. I am tempering my rating due to the reading experience. It is too slow and frankly a tedious read in places - so much so I gave up once. On the second attempt I was reading the starting sentences of paragraphs to then only continue into the paragraph if it was interesting. I was only reading closely as the second half of the book progressed. Three stars it is for lasting impression.

Have enjoyed John Grisham novels in the past, but this one (to give credit to JG, I think this is intended to do justice to the horrendous wrong that was done to the individual concerned) goes into great detail about his life and the forensics etc of the crime. Also lots of detail about Baseball, which some would like but not me! It is a very thorough study and of course written well, but I found it a struggle to get through (for a Book Group read) though it did make for a good conversation

I haven't read a John Grisham book for a long time, in fact the last was "the runaway jury", when I was actually doing jury service. I had just finished reading all of Harlan Coben books and was unsure what to read next, when this came up on Amazons kindle deal of the day & I decided to give it a go as I enjoyed previous Grisham books all those years ago (well before the age of Kindles,book readers or the internet as we know it today).This book from what I remember is a completely different style from those earlier books! I found it fairly slow going at first and almost gave up (glad I didn't) as we follow the story of college sports star Ron Williamson in his pursuit of sporting glory, drinking, drugs & women.The story starts to gather pace & becomes a page turner when a local cocktail waitress is raped & murdered. After 5 years of dead ends, the police have no leads and are intent on bringing someone/anyone to justice. Despite no physical evidence the police arrest and charge Ron Williamson with murder and set about making a case against him at trial and sending to death row.It is while Ron Williamson is on death row you really get to feel the anguish & torment he goes through as he awaits the lethal injection. Throughout his time in prison he protests his innocents, yet no one listens as the Oklahoma justice system have their man, however crude their efforts were of "framing" him. I equally found sorrow for Ron, once justice prevailed & he was acquitted of all charges and he returned to his home town of Ada, where most including the church turned there back on poor Ron Williamson who had suffered years of injustice at the hands of corrupt police investigations, the prosecution, witnesses testimonies, evidence and even failed by his own lawyers. Finally he receives little in the way of an apology for his years living in "hell".

A true story mainly about a failed baseball player, Ron Williamson, from the small Oklahoma town Of Ada who is suspected of murdering a young waitress.This book was heavy going in parts but nevertheless I think it is an important book as it does show the way in which ordinary people can not only be let down by the American legal system but to be so poorly represented as to be near unbelievable with maybe the death sentence as a result.The book was not necessarily about race as various races suffered equally at the hands of overzealous prosecutors, poor defenders, inadequate judges and stooge witnesses who would say anything for a reduced sentence.Well worthwhile reading and a credit to Mr Grisham for writing it.