Book Review
The Innocent Man
By JOHN GRISHAM Reviewed by PEGGY BARNETT
The situation and people in The Innocent Man might well have occurred in a book of fiction by John Grisham. This time, however, it is all true. Grisham learned about Ron Williamson in a New York Times obituary. He was so intrigued that he spent the next 18 months researching and writing this non-fiction account.

“Murder and Injustice in a Small Town” is the subtitle. The murder is described in the first chapter. Young and pretty Debbie Carter is killed in her own apartment, her body found by her mother. Ineptitude and bumbling by the police lead to the injustice.

Ron Williamson was born in Ada, Oklahoma. He grew up in a poor but loving family, the adored only son. He became an outstanding baseball player, almost making it in the big leagues, but not quite. His disappointment at the loss of what he had hoped would be a career as a star led to increased drinking and drugs and a dissolute life.

He was probably mentally ill by 1982, but he was not a murderer. It is not Ron’s story alone. An acquaintance, Dennis Fritz, also fell into the trap of injustice. Reading about it these years later, it is hard to believe that judges and lawyers could have let it all happen. One realizes, as Grisham points out, however, that there have been a number of such cases revealed since DNA evidence has been available.

Ron maintains his innocence, but he is so unstable that it is easy to doubt him. According to Grisham, the situation was made worse by the way his jailers handled his medication. Further, the prosecution brought in “witnesses” who were criminals willing to lie to lighten their own sentences. It sounds like something from a bad novel, but it really happened.

Ron was awarded disability benefits in 1987 because of his mental condition, though other judges were unable to see how prison conditions aggravated his mental illness. He had received the death sentence at his trial and spent many years on death row, coming very close to the lethal injection. Thirteen years had passed without an execution in Oklahoma, but in 1990 the death chamber was used again. Since 1990, Oklahoma has executed more convicts on a per capita basis than any other state. No place, not even Texas, comes close.”

Fortunately for Ron Williamson, his case was reviewed by Judge Seay and his staff, working on questionable cases. “The trial was rotten, a clear miscarriage of justice had occurred and they wanted to correct it.”

The Innocent Man is not a Grisham thriller, but it is an important story about what can go wrong sometimes. It is available at the Mary Willis Library.

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