by John Grisham
Published in 2007 by Delta Trade Paperbacks
Summary: This book recounts the story of two wrongfully convicted men from Ada, Oklahoma, Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz. Debbie Carter, a young cocktail waitress from Ada, was murdered in the winter of 1982. It was a shockingly brutal crime for which the town was demanding justice. The crime would go unsolved for five years, until Williamson and Fritz were brought up on charges with very flimsy evidence and ultimately convicted due to poor police work, short sighted prosecution and a failure to look at other suspects. They spent twelve years in prison, Dennis as a lifer and Ron on death row, until Judge Seay finally grants a writ of Habeas Corpus that begins the journey to exoneration.
Review: Without a doubt Grisham is a fantastic author of fiction, but this was his first foray into the world of non-fiction. He stumbled across this story in 2004 after reading a headline about Ron Williamson. The story intrigued him enough to investigate further and the more he peeled back the layers of the onion, the more he felt compelled to write a detailed account of this judicial wrong. He has done an exceptional job of communicating facts and details with depth and accuracy while maintaining a novelesque readability. This book reads like a fiction book, but sadly tells an incredibly detailed account of a horrible wrong that almost led to an innocent man to lethal injection in the state of Oklahoma. It is a compelling and informative read that will give anyone a bit of a scare when it comes to their belief in the workings of the justice system.
Reading Recommendation: Yes, a non-fiction book that reads like a novel!
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