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| The Innocent Man | 
 enlarge | Author: John Grisham
Publisher: Dell
Category: Book
List Price: $7.99
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Avg. Customer Rating:  99 reviews
Sales Rank: 969
Media: Mass Market Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 448
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 6.7 x 3.9 x 1.4
ISBN: 0440243831
Dewey Decimal Number: 345.76602523
EAN: 9780440243830
ASIN: 0440243831
Publication Date: November 20, 2007
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Product Description
In the town of Ada, Oklahoma, Ron Williamson was going to be the next Mickey Mantle. But on his way to the Big Leagues, Ron stumbled, his dreams broken by drinking, drugs, and women. Then, on a winter night in 1982, not far from Ron’s home, a young cocktail waitress named Debra Sue Carter was savagely murdered. The investigation led nowhere. Until, on the flimsiest evidence, it led to Ron Williamson. The washed-up small-town hero was charged, tried, and sentenced to death—in a trial littered with lying witnesses and tainted evidence that would shatter a man’s already broken life…and let a true killer go free. Impeccably researched, grippingly told, filled with eleventh-hour drama, John Grisham’s first work of nonfiction reads like a page-turning legal thriller. It is a book that will terrify anyone who believes in the presumption of innocence—a book no American can afford to miss.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 94 more reviews...
 Guilty Until Proven Innocent? December 7, 2007
69 out of 72 found this review helpful
The phrase "Grisham book" and word "important" aren't often found in the same sentence, but John Grisham's 2006 non-fiction book, "The Innocent Man", allows me to state that Grisham has now written the most important book of his mega-successful career, and one of the most important I've read by any author.
The book recounts two murders in the small town of Ada, Oklahoma. Both victims are young women. In both cases, the local and state police investigating the case are stumped. But with a toxic blend of extremely circumstantial "evidence", shocking crime scene photos, junk science, inexpert experts, jailhouse snitches and critical "dream confessions" induced by near-torture tactics, the police pin the murders on four young men of the area, two per murder.
The "innocent man" of the title is 30-something ne'er-do-well Ron Williamson, a schoolboy baseball star whose dreams of playing in Yankee Stadium dissolve in the low minors in a mix of arm injuries, booze and the onset of mental illness. By the time of the murder that consumes most of Grisham's tale, Williamson has washed up back home in Ada, and deservedly earned a reputation as a loudmouth loose cannon of sorts. Still his worst crime is passing a $300 phony check.
Skipping forward quickly, Williamson becomes the focus of the police's investigation and ultimately finds himself on death row in an Oklahoma criminal justice system whose aim seems to be to continuously reduce the amount of respect shown to death row inmates until it reaches zero. Shrewd detectives that they are, the police "know" that there's a second killer because of a misspelled warning message written in catsup at the scene, "dont chase us or ealse." Enter suspect two, single father Dennis Fritz, whose main crime is to be a friend of Williamson.
I'll stop here regarding the "plot", even though this is a news story and you could look it up. While novelistic in format, "The Innocent Man" reads more like a newspaper report, or like a lawyer dispassionately recounting the facts of a case. (Well after awhile not so dispassionately, as the injustices against the accused and then convicted men pile up.) The issues raised by the case and brought to light by Grisham cover the gamut of criminal justice - abuse of police power, single-minded focus on particular suspects and deliberate ignorance of others, near-torture-induced confessions, prosecutorial arrogance, lack of resources provided to defendants, mishandling of evidence, coercion of expert witnesses, use of junk science to dazzle a jury, the general and mistaken belief by the community that the police only arrest guilty parties, and most compellingly in Williamson's case, the inability of the criminal justice system to recognize and deal humanely with mentally ill prisoners.
My wife read the almost 450-page paperback version in one day. She then bugged me to read it for several days until I interrupted my second attempt at Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer: A Novel and dove in. Even while sick, I finished it in a day-and-a-half. After his disappointing novella "Bleachers", I'd pretty much written off Grisham (never have considered him much better an airplane read in the first place), but I'm deeply grateful to him to recognizing the power of this story and bringing to the attention of so many people with this fine book. I also salute him for sticking to the non-fiction format, resisting the novelist's urge to fictionalize the story and embellish it with tie-ins to the Oklahoma City bombing, 9/11 and the like. "The Innocent Man" may not stand up as literature to recently-deceased Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song, but it's still a great book--the best true-crime story I've read with the most important messages about America's criminal justice system and its generally unrecognized threat to innocent men and women everywhere (and especially in Ada, OK where the DA that prosecuted the cases is still in office).
 Justice hangs by a fragile thread in Ada, OK (3.75 *s) January 6, 2008
20 out of 22 found this review helpful
This book chronicles the life of one Ron Williamson, born in Ada, OK, 1953, as he spiraled down from being the teen-age town hope as the next Mickey Mantle to being the town drunkard in his twenties, living only on the generosity of friends and family, and, worst of all, to death row in the OK prison system after egregious actions of the local prosecutor resulted in Ron's unjustified conviction for the murder and assault of a young female.
The book is strongest in its depiction of what it is like for a person with limited resources to become ensnared in the legal system, where without good legal counsel the checks are few on police misconduct, even coercion, manufactured witnesses, misuse of so-called experts, and prosecutors willing to sacrifice the innocent to community demands for revenge. In addition, the book is commentary on the willingness of prison systems to permit the physical and, even more so, the mental deterioration of inmates, denying treatment for blatantly obvious conditions. In contrast to local malfeasance, the various legal persons at the appeals levels were consummate professionals and were ultimately responsible for recognizing prosecutorial excess in the very trying of Ron Williamson and his friend Dennis Fritz. Whether their recognition of prosecutorial misconduct would have resulted in acquittal in another trial became irrelevant in the face of exonerating DNA evidence.
The book does get a bit tedious in following the carousing of Ron and his buddies and the many attempts of him and others, most especially his older sister Annette, to obtain help for his fragile mental state. Even upon release from prison after being exonerated, there is a lot of transitioning among a variety of residences and nursing facilities. The author's entire coverage of the subject of mental illness and competency as it relates to the legal process is vaguely presented at best. Furthermore, as Ron's story unfolds, the reader is constantly given the impression that Ron is practically insane and must be pumped full of psychotic drugs, yet the treatments are constantly abandoned and he functions reasonably well until the next intervention. His approach seems unnecessarily alarmist.
Though not emphasized by the author, this book is a huge reminder of the ramifications of poor child rearing and exaggerated expectations of a professional career in sports. Ron as the youngest in his family learned to be a manipulator, forcing the family to spend money on him that was not there. He was so certain that he would make it to the big leagues in baseball that he had no backup plan, nor did he receive much in the way of realistic consultation in that area. He was not well-served by his parents or by those who exploited his baseball skills with tremendous consequences to his maturation.
While the author acknowledges that Ron became a loud drunk and often intimidating when his abbreviated baseball career ended at age twenty-four, he has little to say concerning Ron's very real potential for violence. During Ron's hearings and trials numerous women came forward with stories of being frightened by Ron, which were not refuted. And of course, he was acquitted of two rapes in Tulsa in his early twenties. Ron is not a particularly sympathetic character. Though obviously wrongly accused and convicted of this murder, it is not a stretch to wonder what potential for violence existed within.
It really is alarming to think that an innocent man can get to death row. But in this case, the local law enforcement personnel and the prosecutor actually did not care. They knew they had no case, yet manipulated the system to put an innocent man on death row. Is justice in this country really that fragile? This was a factual case. Their non-involvement was clear. But the facts meant nothing. That is the author's main story.
As a further note, the local prosecutor vehemently objects to the author's book and has on a web site a lengthy rebuttal. Yes, maybe the author obscured or ignored some facts or got others out of order. Yet the rebuttal does not explain away the fundamental actions that were taken to put an innocent man on death row. One would think that the citizens of Ada would fear facing this prosecutor, but he has been elected time after time. That's disturbing.
Riveting, Informative, but a bit too slanted. November 27, 2007
18 out of 21 found this review helpful
I bought this book at the airport because it was the latest from Grisham. I did not even read the blurb. I was about 50 pages into this book before it started to dawn on me that this book was non-fiction, and then I noticed the pictures. I wound up spending the next 14 hours of travel reading, and only put the book down when my eyes were too heavy too stay open anymore. The story reads like fiction, but is mostly true. The fact that this book was slanted heavily against the police and prosecution was self-evident, but at the same time, I understood his tendency toward that. I really feel that Grisham could have been a bit more objective, but then again, the police and prosecution were possessed of a frightening competence in convicting innocents, and also a frightening maliciousness and/or incompetence in not pursuing obvious investigation paths.
I finally finished the book and was so intrigued that I started doing researching the cases for myself, and found that it was indeed true that Grisham had slanted the tale more heavily than he should have, but also felt more slanted against the police and prosecution myself. There is absolutely no remorse to be had from them, and so one is left with little sympathy for them.
This book puts as much light on the plight of the mentally ill in the "justice" system as it does on the plight of the unjustly accused and convicted. It should also make one take the next step, and wonder how many people are innocent of lesser crimes, which while not as devastating as a murder conviction, still damage and destroy people's lives every day. I myself have been witness to friend's and family unjustly convicted of lesser crimes, and have witnessed the years and even decades that it takes them to recover.
The "justice" system of this country is, for the most part, one of bringing lambs to slaughter, and if you are unjustly accused and can't afford AND find a very good lawyer, the chances are very good that you will be convicted and forced to pay for the mistakes of others. I say afford AND find, because finding a truly good lawyer, one who will fight the good fight, and not simply set up a plea-bargain, can be very hard, and while a good lawyer is almost always expensive, an expensive one is not often a great one.
If you are expecting Grisham's usual, smooth story-telling, you may be disappointed with this book. It is also not a "feel-good" story. I was saddened, depressed, and then angered at this tale, and when I felt I could get no angrier, I felt fury. If you are expecting a clearly defined good and evil, you may also be disappointed, because the main protagonists of this story are not the kind of people most of us would want as friends.
I feel that Ron Williamson, though clearly not culpable in the crime he was convicted for, could have easily wound up raping and/or murdering someone, had he not been locked up, but then again, who's to say that he would not have reached rock-bottom before then, and recovered from the downward spiral he was in? That is to not imply that he deserved what he got, but only to give some indication of the unsympathetic feelings that this man brings out.
In summary, I feel this is a good book, only held back from greatness by the author's obvious lack of objectivity. That said, I don't feel I could have remained objective myself, had I spent 18 months researching and writing it.
Grisham Is Great in Non-Fiction Too! December 15, 2007
10 out of 11 found this review helpful
I am a fan of Grisham's fiction, and have always appreciated his ability to explore the corrupting influence of power, the law, and money, while still being entertaining. He does this as well in the non-fiction The Innocent Man which is about how the justice system in small-town Ada, Oklahoma, sent a unpopular local drunk Ron Williamson, to death row after a quick and perfunctory trial. In the trial the weak evidence presented by a police force and zealous prosecutor anxious to solve a brutal and notorious murder on behalf of a scared and anxious public led to a wrongful conviction, and quick sentence to Oklahoma's Death Row in 1988. Seemingly, there are no heroes in Ada. Prosecutors were willing to ignore exculpatory evidence, a public defender system tolerated incompetence, and a jail and prison system created and then tormented the mentally ill
On the surface, the bad guys in The Innocent Man are the individuals working for the police, court system, small towns, and even the local newspapers. However, look more deeply, and you will see that Grisham is really pointing his finger at a public which more than justice and protection from murderers, wants vengeance, at any cost. Ada, just like thousands of jurisdictions in the United States, gets exactly what the justice system they want when jurors willingly ignore evidence, voters elect politicians ready to demonize town drunks, and townspeople buy newspapers for their capacity to inflame rather than inform.
In short, the problem is not just the bad guys, town drunks, sloppy prosecutors, lazy defense lawyers, corrupt police officers, or scurrilous newspapers editors. The problem is us. Anyone having an interest in the American justice system should read this book. Is The Innocent Man always balanced in its presentation of Williamson's case? No, it is not. But so what? The case made by Grisham is against us in our role as citizens, and our responsibility as humans to both protect the least among us, and especially avoid persecuting them. In the public Grisham makes a great case. I for one in my middle class comfort plead guilty to too often hoping for the best of our criminal justice system, and assuming the worst of those who are arrested. The wrongful convictions of people like Ron Williamson tell us that we should be more thoughtful and careful as citizens, voters, and jurors. Grisham's point is that for the criminal justice system to be effective, we cannot demand the emotional comfort of prosecution, at the expense of justice.
 Good story, poor argument on policy November 6, 2007
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
This book is a compelling story of a prosecutor and small-town police force out of control. The question of how our governments should respond to the story is not as easy as the outrage one feels mid-way through the book.
Grisham's first non-fiction work uses techniques from the muckraking tradition, and makes no apologies about it. Often over-the-top, full of preachiness and indignation, he could have had a greater impact simply telling this powerful story.
Thankfully, the author did not succumb to the current non-fiction fashion of inflating the book to a thousand pages. It's a quick read -- and it's worth the read, and it should be required reading for every prosecutor. (Full disclosure: I'm a prosecutor.)
The harder issue is what to do about the manifest injustice detailed in this book. No system is capable of preventing injustice when the actors in the system are corrupt. But this story involved a clutch of bad actors in one community, all with authority. It does not follow that this is a systemic problem, nor that a systemic solution is called for.
Making policy on the basis of anecdote is foolhardy. This book makes the case for a prosecutor's disbarment, not the abolition of the death penalty.
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