The mass appeal of John Grisham’s mystery novels has always puzzled me. The plotting strikes me as mostly predictable, the character development as frequently weak, the writing as often flat. I can name two dozen mystery writers whose novels are more compelling. Yet Grisham tops the bestseller list time after time.
Despite my lack of enthusiasm for Grisham’s fiction, I wish “The Innocent Man” had been a novel. Why? Because the true story Grisham tells is awful to contemplate.
Among those who keep tabs on wrongful convictions, the Ron Williamson/Dennis Fritz case is legendary, perhaps the most egregious instance ever of incompetence and dishonesty by police, forensic examiners, prosecutors and judges.
Despite its legendary status, despite previous publications about this particular miscarriage of justice, the wrongful murder convictions of Williamson and Fritz have not made them household names.
That is probably about to change, because
Grisham has built his first nonfiction book about crime around the Ada, Okla., rape and murder of Debra Sue Carter. After 16 bestselling novels that have made Grisham a house-
hold name and a wealthy man, he has decided that truth is stranger, and worthier, than fiction. Because of Grisham’s fan base, “The Innocent Man” is quite likely to reach bestseller status too. And deservedly so.
Here is how the Grisham book came to be. In early December 2004, Grisham noticed an obituary in the New York Times under the headline “Ronald Williamson, Freed From Death Row, Dies at 51.” Jim Dwyer, a journalist with an admirable history of documenting wrongful convictions, wrote the obituary. Grisham read it, amazed. How had he missed the original reports about the 1982 rape/murder, the arrest of Williamson and Fritz five years later after it seemed the crime never would be solved, the trials and appeals, the brutal imprisonment of the defendants and, finally, the exoneration of both men after the state of Oklahoma came within five days of executing Williamson and placing Fritz in prison for the rest of his life?
“Not in my most creative moment could I conjure up a story as rich and layered as Ron’s,” Grisham said later. “And, as I would soon learn, the obituary barely scratched the surface. Within a few hours, I had talked to his sisters, Annette and Renee, and suddenly I had a book on my hands.”
After researching the case month after month, Grisham could not believe his good fortune as an author and his dismay as a lawyer who wanted to believe the best about the criminal justice system.
“With every visit and every conversation, the story took a different turn,” Grisham explained. “I could have written 5,000 pages.”
Maybe he should have. The book, for all its strengths, barely mentions some key factors. The most diehard advocates for the U.S. criminal justice system mostly have conceded, after decades of denial, that wrongful convictions occur every year, in many of the 50 states, and frequently in the same local jurisdictions over and over because the same police officers and the same prosecutors refuse to learn from their grievous mistakes.
A 5,000-page book by Grisham perhaps could have elucidated fully all the factors leading to the arrests, trials and prison terms of two men with no connection to the Carter homicide.
Those factors include:
- Law enforcement officials desperate to close a murder investigation after years of dead ends;
- Those same law enforcement officials deciding to arrest Williamson based on a theory that failed the common-sense test, then compounded their idiocy by arresting Fritz solely because of his sporadic friendship with Williamson;
- The lack of credible physical evidence;
- The concocted accounts of unreliable jailhouse snitches hoping for personal favors;
- The suppression of evidence by the prosecutors;
- Junk science dressed up as reliable and valid evidence as presented under oath by those working in police crime labs;
- Defense lawyers in over their heads; and
- Trial and appellate court judges who apparently failed to pay close attention to the evidence.
The saga features heroes too, including a few open- minded, persistent lawyers, judges, private investigators and journalists.
It is not a feel-good book despite the exonerations of Williamson and Fritz. It is, however, an important book. Maybe with Grisham shouting out the causes and frequency of wrongful convictions, meaningful reform will occur in every jurisdiction, rather than only a few.
Steve Weinberg is a freelance investigative reporter who writes frequently about the criminal justice system.
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The Innocent Man
Murder and Injustice in a Small Town
By John Grisham
Doubleday, 368 pages, $28.95
