Book Review: ‘The Innocent Man’…

JOHN GRISHAM’S ‘AN INNOCENT MAN’

The Innocent Man, John Grisham’s first piece of non-fiction work, is a well researched book primarily on account of Ron Williamson, who was wrongly convicted of murder in 1998, and who spent twelve years on Oklahoma’s ‘H’ death row before advances had been made in DNA technology which eventually proved him innocent. Grisham tells a startling and disturbingly true story about America’s justice system gone terribly wrong, the deplorable and totally unacceptable living conditions on Oklahoma’s death rows, and the often sadistic guards employed to watch these inmates. Convicted, also, to the blindness of injustice was another innocent man, Dennis Fritz, although Fritz wasn’t sent to McAlester’s death row. Fritz was later released, too, once DNA was unable to support his original conviction. Throughout, Grisham offers great insight and sharp direction to the miscarriages of justice of these two men.

 

THE STORY starts by telling of a promising small town high school athlete and baseball player, Ron Williamson, who signs a contract with the infamous Oakland A’s in 1971. Grisham chronicles well his festive send-off, elucidating his failure in meeting the discipline and skill level needed for the “big league”, and Williamson’s bouts with bipolar depression and schizophrenia after his release from first the A’s and later the Yankees sporting club who had, too, been interested in his sporting potential.

Grisham's first work of non-fiction on the wrongful conviction of Ron Williamson for the murder of Debbie Carter.

By 1982, Williamson, is unemployed, living back with his parents in Oklahoma, and spending most of his days sleeping on the couch. When not at home, often in the evenings and early hours, he’s wandering the neighbourhood acting “strangely” or drinking loudly in the local bars. When neighbour, Debbie Carter is brutally murdered, Ron becomes one of the “usual suspects” – but, at the exclusion of some fundamental and routine police work. Continually dogged by police harassment and provocation, Ron Williamson confesses to a crime he did not commit. Five years after the murder of Debbie Carter, Williamson is arrested for the murder.

The prosecution’s case against Williamson is riddled with errors. The state exercises coercion, the use of false and inappropriate witnesses, and overlooks and suppresses evidence, not to mention the defendant’s deteriorating mental state and wellbeing. Still, he is convicted on circumstantial evidence and sentenced to death.

The reader is taken on a journey of utter despair; the frightening and unhealthy living conditions of death row, and the appalling abyss by which Ron Williamson descends into deeper madness. Only after eight years in prison, and just five days away from the death chamber, does he receive notification of a retrial. Eighteen months later, after intense scrutiny and thousands of hours of labour by his pro-bono law team, he is released after DNA testing excludes him from the evidence found at the murder scene. His exoneration touched-off a frenzy of media attention.

In the small town of Ada, Oklahoma, from which Williamson had sprung, the townsfolk were always left pondering the guilt and original conviction passed upon him. It is evidently clear that after reading John Grisham’s testimonies, Ron Williamson had always been innocent. DNA aside, exculpatory evidence, which could have been used in proving innocence, was ignored because the police and state prosecutor “had their man”. So much of the evidence that should have been produced at the original trial had been excluded and, as such, Williamson had been denied a fair trial, an assumption that has always underpinned the US justice system. Williamson’s twelve years on death row was a travesty of justice, to put things mildly.

Unfortunately, Williamson was not to enjoy his freedom for long. He died of cirrhosis of the liver just five years after his release. Upon his release and newly found freedom Ron had turned heavily to drinking.

 

IN his afterward, Grisham says he was unaware of the Williamson case until he read Ron’s obituary in the New York Times. Intrigued with the story, he then spent five years talking to Ron’s sisters, lawyers, fellow inmates, jailors, and neighbours, before delivering his first work of non-fiction.

 

THE INNOCENT MAN is a compelling and convincing account of American justice gone awry. Much similar to Sister Helen Prejean’s 1994 novel, Dead Man Walking, it makes the reader question the justice in America’s death penalty statutes. Although it tends to drag a little around mid-story, with no fictionalised suspense to hold the reader’s interest, the reversal and subsequent acquittal, and the drama surrounding it, more than make up for this lull.

 

© Mark Dowe 2009: all rights protected

mark.dowe@googlemail.com