I love John Grisham books. Well, his legal thrillers anyway. He's written a couple of different types of novels, like one about Christmas and a couple about football. Maybe one day I'll check them out, but until then anything from Grisham revolving around a lawyer or courtroom, and I'm on it. I've read every one of his legal thrillers which, having just counted, stands at 16 including this one.
The Innocent Man has the distinction of being his first work of non-fiction. It tells the true story of events leading to the arrest and conviction of Ron Williamson, a down-on-his-luck Oklahoma man, for murder, and his time on death row.
As the title suggests, Ron Williamson is an innocent man, but it wasn't just a mistake that led to this injustice, it was the local police and local judiciary that not only allowed it to happen, but in many ways precipitated it from start to finish. It reads like a textbook case of what is wrong with the system, and how someone could get convicted on circumstantial evidence and lazy and corrupt police work. Ron is eventually cleared by DNA after 12 years on death row. Sounds like a happy ending, but it's anything but. To see how much of the man's life was taken from him, and the toll it had on him, is devastating. And it's not only Ron Williamson that suffers, there are a few other stories told alongside his that mirror each other in their miscarriage of justice.
This book might enforce a lot of beliefs against the death penalty and I couldn't argue that it's not a great example of how things can and do go very wrong. I could go on awhile about the politics of the issue, but I'll just wrap this up by saying I liked the book. Check it out if you're interested in an illuminating experience into criminal justice.
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