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

The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town | John Grisham | Well researched documentation - remarkably written!

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The Innocent Man: ...

	The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town John Grisham Doubleday, 2006 - 368 pages average customer review:based on 446 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

John Grisham?s first work of nonfiction, an exploration of small town justice gone terribly awry, is his most extraordinary legal thriller yet.

In the major league draft of 1971, the first player chosen from the State of Oklahoma was Ron Williamson. When he signed with the Oakland A?s, he said goodbye to his hometown of Ada and left to pursue his dreams of big league glory.

Six years later he was back, his dreams broken by a bad arm and bad habits?drinking, drugs, and women. He began to show signs of mental illness. Unable to keep a job, he moved in with his mother and slept twenty hours a day on her sofa.

In 1982, a 21-year-old cocktail waitress in Ada named Debra Sue Carter 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. The two were finally arrested in 1987 and charged with capital murder.

With no physical evidence, the prosecution?s case was built on junk science and the testimony of jailhouse snitches and convicts. Dennis Fritz was found guilty and given a life sentence. Ron Williamson was sent to death row.

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.

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Eye Opener

I honestly didn't know that I was reading non fiction until I was about 30 pages into this book. It kept me interested from cover to cover and it really made me think. It is so terrifying that innocent men and women can go to jail on such little evidence...I will not look at a deathrow inmate the same again. I'm so glad that John Grisham decided to write this amazing story!

Well researched documentation - remarkably written!

This real-life story is very emotional, rousing and compelling and in my opinion also very exciting. Even if you know the outcome already and the writing style isn't out for suspense. The nonfictional narration is constructed as a history of a criminal case and less intended as a thriller. In the English edition in midsection there are photographs of some participants which help a lot to put oneself in there place and empathize with them. It is a book that gives a deep insight in the touching life of a wrongly convicted person, who is hit hard by destiny several times - the burst dream of a baseball career, alcoholism, drugs, women, schizophrenia and eventually the condemnation for death penalty. It is a distressing factual report of a human tragedy, put together from many conclusive pieces of a puzzle. To my mind no page is too long and no excessive information is given. Anyway I can recommend this book warmly to every empathic, humanely and politically interested reader.

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The worst of times

An excellent book; an important book. The tone of the prose puzzled me for a while, but I realized eventually that there is a kind of dark allegory in the style that helps keep several themes going at once. The most obvious of these is the intertwined stories of the several characters, but the depth is created by interweaving the issues of Law, Capital Punishment, Due Process, Mental Health, to name just a few. The myriad minor characters provide a sort of cell structure to continuously regenerat the narrative. Grisham also has a plain respect for the basic story, and never intrudes, except for the rare expression of disbelief. A must read--read it!

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OK, but I think that I got my fill of Grisham already

This is book can be easily read and may be good for an airline ride or for a long wait somewhere, but will not stand the test of time and won't hold up what I call the "smell test". It is at least average but Grisham could do better. But you could do worse and if you are a Grisham fan, this is about average, not his best and not his worst.

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