The Innocent Man

Those of you who agree with the death penalty will rethink your position after you read John Grisham's first nonfiction book, The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town (NYC: Doubleday; 2006), while those of you who disagree with the death penalty will find your position reinforced after you've read this stunning book.

And stunning it is due to the obvious and egregious miscarriage of justice that was so casually carried out in a small town. This book tells the tragic story of former major league baseball hopeful, Ron Williamson, who was the first major league draft choice from the state of Oklahoma in 1971. Six years later, Williamson returned a broken man and showing signs of serious mental illness. Unable to hold a job, he moved in with his mother and slept twenty hours per day on her couch. Eventually, after scaring the neighbors with his strange behavior and bad habits for several years, he and his equally innocent friend, Dennis Fritz, were arrested and charged with a rape and murder that they did not commit. The book then details how their cases were mishandled and how Williamson -- an innocent but astonishingly unlucky man -- was sent to death row and was almost executed. Williamson's years on "death row" were sad and frightening all at the same time. Finally, Williamson and Fritz were eventually exonerated and released -- the only happy event in Williamson's otherwise tragically unhappy life.

Throughout the entire book, Grisham relies on an appealing conversational tone in the nearly total lack of conversation. From the beginning, the author's story-telling is measured and careful as he describes the events leading up to the 1982 rape and murder of a young cocktail waitress, Debra Sue Carter, then it becomes astonished and sometimes is even barely controlled outrage at the prosecution's use of deceit and false testimony of jailhouse snitches and convicts to convict Williamson and Fritz. Eventually, the author moves on to the exoneration of these two innocent men, thanks to the efforts of The Innocence Project.

As a former criminal defense attorney, Grisham had apparently never before spent much time worrying about wrongful convictions. But, unfortunately, they happen fairly often in this country, and with increasing frequency and exonerations seem to be happening weekly. And with each one of them, the question is asked -- how can an innocent man be convicted and kept in prison for 20 years? Grisham's book tells the sad story of two such innocent men and a gross miscarriage of justice, and as such, it is an excellent example of how things can go terribly wrong with our judicial system, and it raises the concern that innocent men should be reimbursed and rehabilitated after their exoneration and release.

As I read this book, I was constantly astonished that Williamson was so obviously mentally ill -- depressed, suffering from hallucinations and hearing voices -- and yet, his prison captors steadfastly refused to see this or to act on his behalf to alleviate his suffering. Even though this book is dark and oppressive, it is quite educational about the legal system, and maddeningly frustrating regarding the sorry state of America's mental health system. Regardless of your stance on the death penalty, this affecting book will be on your mind for quite some time after you've finished reading it.

John Grisham is the author of eighteen novels. As a child, Grisham dreamed of being a professional baseball player, but lacking the talent, he instead went to law school. Since publishing his first novel in 1988, he has published one book per year. When he's not writing, Grisham devotes time to charitable causes, including taking mission trips with his church group. The man who dreamed of being a professional baseball player now serves as the local Little League commissioner. The six ballfields he built on his property have played host to over 350 kids on 26 Little League teams. He lives in Virginia and Mississippi.

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