The Innocent Man

THE INNOCENT MAN: MURDER AND INJUSTICE IN A SMALL TOWN, by John Grisham. New York: Doubleday, 2006. 368pp. Hardcover. $28.95. ISBN: 9780385517232. Reviewed by Jack E. Call, Department of Criminal Justice, Radford University. Email: jcall [at] RADFORD.EDU. John Grisham’s legal novels are well-known to avid readers of that literary genre. THE INNOCENT MAN is Grisham’s first (and so far only) venture into non-fiction. It tells the story of Ron Williamson, an Oklahoma boy with great promise as a professional baseball player. However, the demons of drink, drugs, and mental illness prevented Williamson from fulfilling that potential. Eventually, Williamson’s demons also destroyed his marriage, prevented him from holding a decent job, and resulted in his development of a local reputation as an erratic, unpredictable man who could be likable at times but was generally not to be trusted. When a young female acquaintance, Debbie Carter, was found raped and murdered in her garage apartment in his hometown of Ada, Oklahoma, in 1982, it was not surprising that the police eventually considered him a person of interest. For many readers, THE INNOCENT MAN will interest them as a story about a man whose promise as a person is unrealized and who becomes a victim of the criminal justice system. Their interest will lie in Ron Williamson, the person. For others, the interest lies in the story the case tells about the criminal justice system. As such, it can be added to a growing list of stories told about justice gone awry. THE INNOCENT MAN paints a picture of a seriously flawed criminal justice system. While virtually no component of the system portrayed in the book emerges unscathed, it is the police who look particularly bad, with the prosecution running a close second. The police did a reasonably good job of investigating the murder scene (although at trial, Williamson’s defense attorney pointed out in his cross-examination of one of the primary