The Innocent Man

The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town by John Grisham


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Ok, when I say I like this book, I mean that it is an informative, well-written book that tells an important story. But I can't say I "liked" it--it made me more heart-sick than anything. It's the story of a man, who is falsely accused of a crime, sent to death row, and at the eleventh hour, is exonerated. But it is really the story of several men who were badly mistreated, and falsely accused and prosecuted and found guilty all in the same small town in Oklahoma. Grisham doesn't tell the story from the side of the policemen and investigators who basically tortured "confessions" out of these innocent men, and I wished that he had. I find it hard to believe that these policemen could behave like that without some other motive than just trying to nail somebody, anybody, for a crime. But the fact that they behaved like this more than once doesn't demonstrate that they were full of "good intentions".
This is the story of how justice can be grossly miscarried. But it is also the story of how mentally ill people are minimilized, villified, and abused. It is also the story of how people without money are minimilized, villified, and abused. How Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz were convicted of a murder they didn't commit is due more to their pocketbook than to the evidence at hand. I was also appalled by the conditions of prisons in this country. I was deeply saddened by the lack of care and respect people have for one another, people who should know better. How can we as humans see suffering and not try to relieve it somehow?
This isn't the best non-fiction I've read. It could be better researched. Some of it could be better told. And there are story lines that are delved into deeply in the story and then not referred to again (until the epilogue) but it is an engrossing story, and in the end, it is the story of how justice ultimately triumphed, at least in the case of the courts. What we can do for the mentally ill still seems to remain a big question.
Grisham said he could have written even more on this story, and I sort of wish he had. I wish he would have gone more into Gore's trial, told more of how the lawyers and people who helped him felt about Williamson, and what the original prosecutors thought, felt. But what is here is a great, tragic story. It's just too bad it's all true.

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