Book on CD read by Craig Wasson

In 1971 Ron Williamson was signed by the Oakland A’s and left Ada, Oklahoma to pursue his dreams of big-league glory. But an injury and bad habits (drinking, drugs and women), ended his career. Back in Ada he began to show signs of mental illness. He moved in with his mother, and slept up to 20 hours a day on the sofa. In 1982 a young woman was raped and murdered, and for five years the police could not solve the crime. For reasons that were never clear they suspected Ron Williamson and his friend Dennis Fritz. Despite a complete lack of evidence, and Ron having an alibi, the two were arrested and charged with capital murder. Relying on jail-house snitches and a “dream” confession, the prosecutors hammered at both men. Dennis was given a life sentence; Ron was sent to death row.

Grisham first heard about Ron Williamson when he happened to read the man’s obituary. The facts presented raised more questions and Grisham started researching how an innocent man could have been arrested, charged, convicted and imprisoned with so little regard for his rights or for the truth. The result is a gripping tale that had me on the edge of my seat. Meticulously researched, Grisham packs the book with information that slowly but convincingly builds the case. If the reader is disturbed by reading about these events, one can only imagine the horror and despair of living such a scenario.

One of the most poignant sections comes after Ron has been released and is interviewed by a journalist. Asked about his beliefs, he answers: I hope I go to neither heaven nor hell. I wish that at the time of my death that I could go to sleep and never wake up and never have a bad dream. Eternal rest, like you’ve seen on some tombstones, that’s what I hope for. Because I don’t want to go through the Judgment. I don’t want anybody judging me again.

What begins as the story of one man’s nightmare becomes a treatise on the state of America’s Justice System, and its many flaws. From the author notes at the end of the book: The journey also exposed me to the world of wrongful convictions … This is not a problem peculiar to Oklahoma, far from it. 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.

Craig Wasson does a fine job performing the audio version of this book. He has good pacing and he really brought Ron to life.

Appalling! Brutal rape and murder + (shoddy) police investigation + (guilt by association) suspects + (unsubstantiated) prosecution theories + (neglectful) defense + rush to judgement = (wrongful) conviction and death sentence. It just deteriorates from there. John Grisham does a masterful job of taking this story through the entire sequence and in the process lays bare the many ways in which the criminal justice system is horribly broken. Props to Grisham, usually a fiction writer (and a very good one), for tackling this true story and presenting the unvarnished reality of wrongful convictions, the death penalty, and mental illness, and the costs we all pay for this mess.

I was surprised to learn that Oklahoma tops the list of states for number of death penalty executions. After reading this book you have to wonder how many are innocent.

Bello, l’unico libro “non-fiction” scritto da Grisham.
La vicenda è allucinante e rientra nel filone a la “Making a murderer” sulle storture del sistema giudiziario americano.
Per chi volesse c’è anche un bellissimo documentario su Netflix tratto da questo libro, ne amplia ed estende alcuni aspetti ed è fatto molto bene.

This not what I expected? The NETFLIX “documentary” seemed slow, it is a “documentary” but I expected more “drama” like a typical Grisham movie....?

IMDb - The Innocent Man review
Netflix - The Innocent Man Trailer



The True Story Behind The Innocent Man's Most Gruesome Murder - website link - 12/14/2018

Originally I wanted to give this book five stars for its readability, research and relevance. My primary reservation was the overall disturbing nature of the book. It's about an horrendous travesty of justice in my own state against two innocent men which explored the all-too common occurance of incarceration and even execution of those who never had anything to do with the crime(s) in question.

Upon doing a little more research, I discovered that the author Mr. Grisham, may not have not done the sterling job I thought he did in researching and presenting the facts in this case. Or perhaps, I should say, he did his research very well, but he let his own personal agenda carry him away at times in how he presented those facts--that agenda being that corrupt officials allow themselves to be pressured into putting the innocent behind bars.

In this book, Mr. Grisham seems bent on creating a classic villian out of the prosecutor, Bill Peterson. After finishing the book, I happened upon Mr. Peterson's view of the situation which offers a different perspective on Grisham's protrayal of events in his book. According to Peterson, The Innocent Man isn't non-fiction because Grisham failed to portray Peterson's side of the story, leaves out critical information and 'compromised (the truth) in favor of dramatic license'. Reading just some of what Peterson says at his website, I'm inclined to agree with him.

That Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz deserved and were denied justice, I have no doubt. That the events unfolded quite as they are portrayed by Grisham, I have more than a few.




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Heard John Grisham speak about The Innocent Man Murder and Injustice in a Small Town on the 13th of October 2009 at Oklahoma City University School of Law. The book itself concerns the wrongful conviction of two men in Ada, OK but in Mr. Grisham's address he said that wrong arrests and executions are a national phenomenon and problem.

It was a worthwhile event which not included a fascinating talk by the noted author but also selections from the play, The Exonerated A Play.

Really sad and scary true story about a man unjustly imprisoned for 12 years for a murder he did not commit. Unpleasant to think about how the legal system was allowed to get away with it considering there was no real evidence that Ron Williamson even knew the girl he was supposed to have killed. I'd like to say it has a happy ending but it doesn't really.

a true story. this book was a page turner and was good

A friend of mine got so excited over seeing me thinking of getting this book (we were at a second-hand shop together) that he gave me the money to buy it, not knowing that another friend of mine was buying all these books for me anyways. (not to mention the books were actually twice the price we originally thought they were)
So now I have three more shekels (0.82 dollars) to my name, and a book by an author a friend of mine loves.

I was almost at the end of the first chapter before I realized I had read (or listened to) this story several years ago. Ron Williamson led a crappy life, pursuing a baseball career based on a fair arm that he threw out early on, and imbibing drugs and alcohol that contributed to his undoing. On the other hand there is no excuse for the treatment he and his, sort-of, co-defendant (they were tried separately days apart) received from police and prosecutors in Ada, OK. Just two weeks from an execution date, after habeus procedures had commenced, he obtained help from some people who saw of his mental illness and likely innocence and, after spending years in jail, he was freed based on DNA evidence.

Great book, as usual, from Mr. Grisham. It took me longer than normal to read it; I had a lot going on in my life at the time. My son read it and enjoyed it as well, in fact, he liked it so much, that it made a Grisham fan of him and bought more of Mr. Grisham's books.

Tedious. Interesting, but nearly boring in tedium.

While Grisham states that he could have written a thousand pages about this story, it really could have been told in about 100. Also, the non-fiction nature of the story compels Grisham to tell the story rather like a reporter, reporting all of the facts in excruciating detail. Many of the details are indeed interesting, but the sheer number of them becomes overwhelming. There is very little dialogue (as one might expect from a non-fiction report of the facts), and not a single spoken line for the first third of the book it seemed.

The story told in the pages is a compelling one however. The title is "The Innocent Man", but really touches on the lives of four innocent men. The "Man" in question has his particular story told in detail, and as the cover explains, is sent to death row for a crime he did not commit. Perhaps Grisham wanted to honor this man in particular, and thus told as much detail of his life story as he possibly could.

Maybe I was in the mood for something more fun, but I found the story of the murder investigation, and the blunderous trial that followed, painful and frustrating. It made me very mad at times. I can only imagine what it was like for those who were convicted.

The main thrust of the book is essentially the prosecution that went bad from the start. Even in our 'just' society, wrongful convictions, even death penalties, happen all the time. It is terribly sad for these men (mostly men, I am sure) to be put in jail for years, decades, and even executed... all the while innocent. Of course, the real killers often escape undetected. This book does not delve at all into what could be done about this, it is simply a tale. While I enjoyed the end of the book much more than the beginning, I found that the sad story, the complete incompetence, the frustration of the wrongful convictions... it mostly just upset me.

I must say, Grisham does a good job writing, and the story is compelling. If you are interested in reading the many details behind an interesting case, perhaps if you are to be a trial lawyer, this is a book worth reading. But, if you are looking for a fun murder mystery, or intense drama, or something light... look elsewhere.

Sometimes reality is far more cruel than any fiction. Ron Williamson was an unpleasant fellow and an egocentric lazy drunkard, but even such poor creatures don't deserve such treatments.

The saddest part of the story is that a purulent garbage like peterson, (after destroying innocents lives for ever) was keeping his odious job as a prosecutor for almost a decade...