The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town

couldn’t put it down. i saw the documentary first then read this and still couldn’t put it down

Was not sure I would like this book but the more I read, the more I got into it. Sad how our justice system works sometimes. Excellent book - a must read for John Grisham fans!!

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I've read many books and legal thrillers are my favorite. But this true story really got me. The injustices given to so many people who are wrongly accused and sent to prison. It happens everywhere and everyday. Thank goodness for the Innocence Project. They do mercy work and are not given enough praise.Ron started out so well as a baseball player and good kid. In time he chose the wrong path and situations. His sisters were always there for him and deserve aplace in heaven just for doing what they did. God bless them.This book will stay with me a long time.

This book is very riveting and moving, as a former police office I find it very disturbing and troubling that the police and prosecutor would conspire in the way that they did, and to continue their persecution after DNA proved their innocence. The entire system failed. Most police officials would be very disturbed by the inappropriate action of the law enforcement team.

Grisham does it again. Only this time he makes us all see what can and does happen to innocent people in our so called Justice System.Being the webmaster for two websites for innocent men on death row opened my eyes to this horrible injustice done to so many.In telling the story of "The Innocent Man," the king of the legal thriller has put a human face on capital punishment and gambled with his audience. If you are expecting a breezy, true-crime read you won't find that here... but you will find a darker product, a well-crafted, meticulous study of a broken system. Grisham asks a nagging question: If wrongful convictions happen all the time, how do we know that the poison is flowing into the real killer's arm?"This is not a problem just in Oklahoma, far from it," Grisham writes. "Wrongful convictions occur every month in every state in this country, and the reasons are all varied and all the same -- bad police work, junk science, faulty eyewitness identifications, bad defense lawyers, lazy prosecutors, arrogant prosecutors."Before his descent into hell, Ron Williamson was a young man bursting with big-league promise, the next Mickey Mantle as the people around Ada, Okla., liked to say.Ron was drafted in 1971 by the Oakland A's a few months after graduating from high school. After a perfunctory stint in the minors, was headed for The Big Time.Ron's love of strip clubs & alcohol was as strong as his swing.By 24, his marriage was wrecked as well as his shoulder.Stripped of his uniform, Ron was either so depressed he couldn't get up off of his mother's couch or filled with manic energy. He moved from job to job and was twice accused of rape, but none of the charges stuck. What his devoted Pentecostal family didn't realize was that Ronnie was slowly losing his mind, beset by undiagnosed manic depression and schizophrenia.The hometown hero had turned resident creep, so when 21-year-old Debbie Carter was found raped and strangled in her Ada apartment in 1982, it was inevitable that the police would find their way to Ron Williamson.What shouldn't have been inevitable, Grisham argues, is the perversion of justice that followed.Though witnesses saw Debra Carter arguing with a man she knew hours before she was killed, that man was NEVER pursued as a suspect. Instead, detectives homed in on Williamson and his friend, Dennis Fritz.A bloody handprint on the bedroom wall of Debra Carter's didn't match Williamson or Fritz -- NOTHING at the scene did -- but the lack of hard evidence didn't stop prosecutors. They convicted the men using a BOGUS confession cobbled together from one of Williamson's tortured dreams, the perjured testimony of jailhouse snitches and "the junk science" of hair analysis.Williamson was clearly mentally ill -- he had to be dragged screaming & hollering from the courtroom -- but NO ONE consulted a psychiatrist to see if he was competent to stand trial.Grisham expertly dissects each judicial and constitutional outrage with cool precision."Once in the system, it's almost impossible to get out," Fritz told a reporter, "even if you are innocent." And that is the terrible truth Grisham lays bare. After DNA proved Williamson and Fritz hadn't killed Debbie Carter, the prosecutor announced that he still considered them suspects.Please, NEVER TRUST THE AUTHORITIES! TRUST THE EVIDENCE!

6-26-12: I'm about halfway through and trying to decide the merits of continuing. This isn't one of Grisham's better novels. The pace is way too slow.6-27-12: I just realized this is non-fiction. I just thought it was bad fiction storytelling, which seemed odd for Grisham. Now I actually feel offended that he took a horrendous real life situation and told it in such a way that I don't particularly care about the people or the events. This is poorly written and, in my opinion, is an injustice to the people who lived these events.6-28-12: Okay, to be fair, now that I know this is non-fiction the writing style makes more sense, though I still think it's poorly written. I feel empathy and interest in the characters and events now, but I'm not sure that is enough to make me want to continue to plod on, I'm trying though.6-29-12: I'm changing my rating from 1 star to 4 stars. Not so much for the writing but for the subject matter. The last 1/4 of the book flows better and the writing is much more compelling. I could feel the connection and humanity in the last 1/4 that seemed to be missing until then. Maybe Grisham intended that to correspond to the events, but that just made it difficult to engage with the story. I just feel that if the first 3/4 had been edited and revised in some way the whole book could have been more compelling. (In the author's note Grisham says he could have written 5,000 pages, and my thought was, "Thank God he didn't!") I do think that my not realizing it was non-fiction until 1/2 way through may have contributed to my not engaging with the story or the writing until later, so it's possible my early criticism is unwarranted. I think the subject matter is so important, I learned a lot, and was deeply touched by the story and the people who lived it. I'm glad to have learned what I learned from this book and will recommend that my son read it someday. The subject is important for any citizen who cares about fairness and justice, and the fallibilty of people at all levels of society.

I enjoyed nearly everything about this book, but the one thing I couldn’t get past was Grisham announcing what was about to happen before he explained it.

Absolutely love reading John Grisham books,especially enjoyed this one,shocking and so sad but excellent read,not to be missed especially for fans of real court drama,so very addictive

I liked that the delivery driver used my box.

Perfecto tal y como se detalla.

In Ada, a small town near Oklaoma City, Debbie Carter was murdered on 8th December 1982. The police have no Idea who the killer is, so they made a set up and with a dream confession they sentence Ron Williamson ( a famous baseball player) and Dennis Fritz. The trial found them guilty, and if Dennis escape the death row, Ron doesn't. Lot of years pass for the appeal process and on 18th July 1988 the execution is been scheduled. Ron's lawyer immediatly starts the proceeding known as "habeas corpus" – Latin for "you should have the body" to try to save Ron from death row, will he succed or Ron will die in four week...The novel is based on a true story.

Révisez votre anglais pendent les vacances, ou même en dehors, avec ce récit authentique d'une erreur judiciaire. John Grisham a un style dépouillé facile à comprendre, et en plus c'est un maître du suspense qui mérite bien sa réputation.