John Grisham: The Innocent Man

[mehastings]

**Discussion to begin August 1**

From the Publisher
John Grisham's first work of nonfiction, an exploration of small town justice gone terribly awry, is his most extraordinary legal thriller yet.

In the major league draft of 1971, the first player chosen from the State of Oklahoma was Ron Williamson. When he signed with the Oakland A's, he said goodbye to his hometown of Ada and left to pursue his dreams of big league glory.

Six years later he was back, his dreams broken by a bad arm and bad habits drinking, drugs, and women. He began to show signs of mental illness. Unable to keep a job, he moved in with his mother and slept twenty hours a day on her sofa.

In 1982, a 21-year-old cocktail waitress in Ada named Debra Sue Carter was raped and murdered, and for five years the police could not solve the crime. For reasons that were never clear, they suspected Ron Williamson and his friend Dennis Fritz. The two were finally arrested in 1987 and charged with capital murder. With no physical evidence, the prosecution’s case was built on junk science and the testimony of jailhouse snitches and convicts. Dennis Fritz was found guilty and given a life sentence. Ron Williamson was sent to death row.

If you believe that in America you are innocent until proven guilty, this book will shock you. If you believe in the death penalty, this book will disturb you. If you believe the criminal justice system is fair, this book will infuriate you.

 

[SFG75]

Ada

I lived in Ada for six years(1980-1986) when my mother taught at East Central University. The description of the bars being on the outer town is something that know that I think about it, is accurate. I can't say that I remember seeing one in the heart of town now. I didn't know there were fifty churches in Ada, though I remember it as being a very devout bible belt community. On a given saturday, you could not only have Jehovah's Witness missionaries, but Mormon, and Baptist ones knocking on your door. You would also routinely see ads for revival meetings and you couldn't throw a rock without hitting a church. I had to do a double-take upon the mentioning of Byng. The school there is definitely rural, I attended for a couple of days to see what it was like.

It helps to do a google map search of the town to get a mind's eye idea of the layout of Ada. Williamson's parents are mentioned as living on 4th street, which is close to ECU. I lived on South Highland. This book brings back a ton of memories, I can't tell you how often I walked to campus, I know the area very well.

And yes Mildred, there is an Ada Evening News You can read a whining editorial about the book and it's negative effects on the good, moral, upright city here.

Here is an interesting anti-Grisham item as well.

The side of the story that Grisham refused to tell was Peterson's. In an October 2006 op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, Joshua Marquis, vice president of the National District Attorneys Association, slammed Grisham's one-sided “reporting.” Peterson himself has started a Web site to tell the story Grisham ignored.

Peterson not only prosecuted Williamson but was among the voices calling for the DNA testing that would exonerate him (it wasn't available at the time of the trial). Marquis noted that the one-sidedness of Grisham's book “feeds the popular perception — nurtured by Hollywood and the news media — that death rows are teeming with wrongfully convicted men who just await DNA testing to set them free.”

Editorial

The Ada Evening News also has an interesting piece on the events from the DA's perspective.-article.

Peterson said the entire book served as a catalyst for his agenda.

“The whole book is motivated by Mr. Grisham's agenda. And that agenda is, he's anti-death penalty, and he wants to sell books.

The only thing that bothers me about this is that folks are upset at how the book portrays the event, not necessarily that someone was wrongly convicted.

 

[SFG75]

I'm a little farther into it and I can barely turn another page-the outrage of it all!. The stress on the police department to find the killer(s) must've been incredible. They definitely went under the table in regards to the interrogations of Tommy Ward, Ward's friend, not to mention Williamson. Unplugging the interview camera, using threats, not to mention making up stories to coax a confession, just maddening. Not only that, but the fact that Ward and his buddy gave conflicting accounts of how the second girl died, and they still couldn't get out of jail shows the depths to which the authorities sank to in order to get a conviction, the facts be damned.

An incredible read, I'll try and get my blood pressure down lower so I can continue.