The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town
Book Cover
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| Author | John Grisham |
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| Country | United States |
| Publisher | Doubleday |
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Publication date
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October 10, 2006 |
| Pages | 368 |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 70251230 |
The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town is a 2006 nonfiction book by John Grisham. It is, like Grisham's Skipping Christmas, outside the legal fiction genre. The book tells the story of Ronald 'Ron' Keith Williamson of Ada, Oklahoma, a former minor league baseball player who was wrongly convicted in 1988 for the rape and murder of Debra Sue Carter in Ada and was sentenced to death. After serving 11 years on death row, he was exonerated by DNA evidence and other material introduced by the Innocence Project and was released in 1999.
Ron Williamson has returned to his hometown of Ada, Oklahoma after multiple failed attempts to play for various minor league baseball teams, including the Fort Lauderdale Yankees and two farm teams owned by the Oakland A's. A shoulder injury inhibited his chances to progress. His big dreams were not enough to overcome the odds (less than 10 percent) of making it to a big league game. His failures lead to, or aggravate, his depression and problem drinking.
Early in the morning of December 8, 1982, the body of Debra Sue Carter, a 21-year-old cocktail waitress, was found in the bedroom of her garage apartment in Ada. She had been beaten, raped and suffocated. After five years of false starts and shoddy police work by the Ada police department, Williamson—along with his "drinking buddy", Dennis Fritz—were charged, tried and convicted of the rape and murder charges in 1988. Williamson was sentenced to death. Fritz was given a life sentence. Fritz's wife had been murdered seven years earlier and he was raising their only daughter when he was arrested.
Grisham's book describes the aggressive and misguided mission of the Ada police department and Pontotoc County District Attorney Bill Peterson to solve the mystery of Carter's murder. The police and prosecutor used forced "dream" confessions, unreliable witnesses, and flimsy evidence to convict Williamson and Fritz. Since a death penalty conviction automatically sets in motion a series of appeals, the Innocence Project aided Williamson's attorney, Mark Barrett, in exposing several glaring holes in the prosecution's case and the credibility of the prosecution's witnesses. Frank H. Seay, a U.S. District Court judge, ordered a retrial.
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