Book Review: The Innocent Man by John Grisham

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

I read this book as part of a literature class, but I absolutely love it. The Innocent Man is John Grisham’s first non-fiction work that reads like a novel. It was published in 2006. It is also my first legal thriller. I’m more of a cozy mystery reader, you know Agatha Christie, even Sherlock Holmes. This falls under “hard-boiled” mysteries, which is the opposite of the “cozy”, giving you all the gory details, “it could, or did happen in real life type of story”.  Legal thrillers fall under this category and that is what this book is.

An  innocent man, Ron Williamson is wrongly convicted of murder and sent to Death Row.  Another  gets life in prison. There is NO tangible evidence to tie men to the murder yet both are convicted. How does this happen, when our Justice system is supposed to be so great?

The novel starts by describing the setting, a town called Ada, Oklahoma, southeast of Oklahoma City. It seems as though it could be describing any quiet small town, where nothing exciting happens, until an unexplained murder happens and then an unexplained kidnapping.

Grisham takes the reader deep inside the justice system, deep inside the jails, the prisons, Death Row in an Oklahoma prison.  He gives the reader all the details of the case inside and out.  Beware, though: Hhe doesn’t shed a nice light on the Ada police. I wanted to strangle them personally for how they treated the defendants.

John Grisham’s website http://www.jgrisham.com/the-innocent-man/ describes the book like this:” If you believe that in America you are innocent until proven guilty, this book will shock you. If you believe in the death penalty, this book will disturb you. If you believe the criminal justice system is fair, this book will infuriate you.”

Here is a youtube video of John Grisham talking about the novel:

I definitely wanted to strangle the cops who forced confessions out of men who they “knew” were guilty but could not prove it. So the question is how to prove it.  Step one: Force a confession. Step two: Ffind anyone who will testify against them (including snitches in the jailhouse.)  Step three: Use “experts” who can throw out language that is above the heads of the people on the jury.  Case solved, the killer is convicted and put to death.

It was a little unnerving what so-called “evidence” held  up in court in this case and how much sway an “expert” has on the jury.  All the expert has to do is use big words and then the jury goes “ ‘ooh -aah’ ” he must be the killer if this guy says so.” And the judge that ruled on this case is still serving as a judge. It makes me sick, I would hope that his views have changed

If you’ve never read John Grisham or if you have an interest in legal thrillers, this one is amazing, it will catch you from beginning to end and keep you enthralled by our so-called justice system.  One would hope that the system has corrected these issues and that it wouldn’t happen again. However, such is life and, since this story is true, we know that it could happen again. Unfortunately, since most of our mysteries are “sanitized”, reading something like this brings you back to the real world and you can again see that the world is a cruel place. But we have to deal with it. Reading non-fiction is about reading how people deal with life. That is why we need to read these things every now and then. Reading this makes you think deeply about the injustice of our system. We’re supposed to be this great country, yet innocent people were still convicted, just to get it off their plate.

I cannot imagine the hours spent in research on this book. However, (and I don’t want to give away too much) there are a few things that Grisham could have explained better.  Two people fell out of the story after the murder that may have been crucial to it.  And second, footnotes or some references would have been nice, so we know where he obtained some of the information.