The Innocent Man – the story of Ron Williamson
February 3rd 2007 02:39
Image: Random House
There is nothing that gets the blood boiling faster than injustice – don’t you agree? I have just finished reading John Grisham’s The Innocent Man, and although I am not naïve when it comes to the legal system and its many faults, it was still hard to believe that so many over-sights and pure incompetence could prevail! Utterly incredulous!
This is Grisham’s first attempt at non-fiction and he approaches it with a no-nonsense attitude. It is the sad story of Ron Williamson from Ada, Oklahoma, a small town sports hero with hopes of getting to the Major League. But when his plans lead no further than the Minors, Ron’s dreams tumble into drug and alcohol abuse that soon lead to petty crime and sexual violence. He is no angel, and Grisham makes this clear from the start.
Things roll out of control for Ron when in 1982 a young Ada girl named Debra Carter is raped and murdered. Police struggle for years to run down the killer(s), but through some totally atrocious and inept investigating they decide, amongst themselves and with little else but hunches, that Ron was their man. Then begins Ron’s true nightmare. Being tried for the murder of someone he never even knew. And the cost would be his life.
The writing is factual and at times a little mundane, but the author is pedantic about getting the facts right, and there are many protocols and procedures to wade through. But the message is not lost. This man was not given his full rights to a fair trial, and because of that, the system failed him.
My interpretation of what happened in Ada was that the law (I use the term loosely here), simply needed someone to pin this murder on, and as Ron was a local no-hoper/trouble-maker, it would be just as easy to pass him off as the killer. Sadly, it worked and Ron was put on Death Row – for eleven years!
This is not fiction, and Grisham could not tie up the ends for us and make everything right again, something his books are famous for. But I do admire him for tackling this book and telling us Ron’s story. In the end Ron was riddled with mental problems (clearly ignored by the police), and struggled at times to even comprehend what was happening to him. Running parallel to all this is his family’s anguish – living in a small town trying to hold the ground in which their son and brother is innocent, something his mother knew for certain as she remembers Ron being with her that night. Mrs Williamson made this statement before she died, but it was never used in Ron’s trial ???
In the end, you would have to read it yourself (and I do recommend it), and find your own fence to either sit on or jump over, but I have personally had a friend on the wrong side of justice, and watched as the wrong decision destroyed her marriage, took her home and financial freedom, and finally her health. She too was innocent, but in our court systems, this does not guarantee justice.
My final thought on this is – ‘If capital punishment sends one innocent person to death, it is not worth having. The margin for error is too great.’
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