By J.E.
I usually find true crime stories very intriguing, so when I learned (albeit a couple years after publication) that John Grisham tried his hand at nonfiction in The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town, I decided to read the book. After all, Grisham is a skilled writer who knows how to tell a tight, gripping tale. What’s more, as a former attorney, this kind of story would be right in his wheelhouse, so I figured he was bound to deliver the goods. Alas, I guess competence in fiction writing doesn’t guarantee the same when the genre shifts to nonfiction.
Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Back in 1982, a 21-year-old cocktail waitress named Debra Sue Carter was brutally raped and murdered in her apartment in the small town of Ada, Oklahoma. There was plenty of forensic evidence left at the scene, but there was no DNA testing back then, so the police didn’t really know what to do with the samples they collected. After a halfhearted investigation that turned up zero suspects, the case remained open and unsolved — until five years later when they hauled in Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz for questioning.
Ron was an Ada native, a man who had once had a promising future as a professional baseball player. Ron led his high school team to a state championship, and then was drafted 41st overall in 1971 by the Oakland A’s. But Ron never made it out of the minors due to injuries and skill level. He had trouble accepting the fact that his baseball career was over, and turned to drinking and drugs to help cope. Ron started having run-ins with the law, which gave him a generally bad reputation in Ada.
Ron was known to frequent several Ada clubs and bars, sometimes with friend Dennis Fritz. Though the two men weren’t even at the same club that Debra Carter was last seen at, and though each had an alibi for the night, Ada police were under intense pressure to solve the five-year-old murder and give the victim’s family closure.
Towards that end, the Ada police department put together a case against Ron and Dennis based on the flimsiest of evidence: statements from convicted felons and jailhouse snitches that placed Ron and Dennis at the club the night of the murder; the fact that Ron had twice been accused of rape before; the fact that Ron’s only alibi for the night of the murder was his mother; and the fact that Ron lived near the victim. Amazingly, the case held up in court, and the two men were convicted. Dennis was sentenced to life in prison, while Ron received the death penalty.
Both Ron and Dennis steadfastly maintained their innocence throughout the proceedings, but because Ron was mentally ill and ranted like a lunatic most of the time, no one paid much attention to him. In Dennis’s case, he simply didn’t have the financial resources to pay for an attorney that could competently handle his appeals. But thanks to the tireless efforts of family members and a few attorneys in the Indigent Defense System, the case was reopened and Ron and Dennis were eventually exonerated after spending 12 years in prison as innocent men.
My Reaction: On the surface, this sounds like it would be a very compelling story, but unfortunately, much of the emotion and impact gets lost in Grisham’s version. Many sections of the book are extremely tedious as Grisham turns to court transcripts and other documents to get his point across, and others suffer because Grisham inexplicably repeats himself quite a bit. I also didn’t understand why Grisham chose to focus the book on Ron Williamson when Dennis Fritz suffered just as much throughout the ordeal. At the very least, the title should have been The Innocent Men.
As a protagonist, I didn’t like Ron Williamson very much — and that was probably Grisham’s purpose in focusing on that man. Ron was annoying with his near-constant drinking, drug use, and womanizing, and I couldn’t even bring myself to feel sorry for him when it was shown that he suffered from mental illness. In fact, I hated how Grisham took “the system” to task for not ensuring that Wiliamson got the mental health care he needed, but gave Ron’s sisters passes for essentially doing the same thing. I mean, after Ron was released from jail, there’s no way the sisters should have just put him in a mobile home all alone when he clearly wasn’t capable of taking care of himself. They didn’t do anything special to ensure that Ron got treatment for his problems, yet Grisham said nothing about their responsibilities to their brother. Very one-sided and exasperating.
Yes, the justice system is flawed, and yes there are probably a lot of wrongly convicted people on death row right now. But if Grisham was trying to win people over or raise awareness of the problem, I’m not sure how effective The Innocent Man is in this regard. As someone who has always been noncommittal on the efficacy of the death penalty, I found myself rolling my eyes at much of Grisham’s personal grandstanding, and wanted to lean the other way just to be contrary.
What happened to Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz was a tragedy for sure. They lost 12 years of their lives because of incompetence, a biased system, and despicable people in the Ada police department. They deserve to have their stories told and to come off as the victims that they were — but Grisham is not up to the task. I recommend skipping the book and simply reading about the case online. It will save you a great deal of time and frustration!
Entourage has been a summertime staple on HBO during its first four years of production, but thanks to the writers strike last year, Season 5 got off to a late start and won’t be airing until September. Unfortunately, that means I probably won’t be recapping the series anymore, as I just have far too many other shows to watch and write about in the fall. I’ll still be watching it since HBO shows repeats all week long, but I won’t write about it on a weekly basis anymore.