The Innocent Man
by John Grisham, read by Dennis Boutsikaris

Publisher: Random House Audiobooks

Price: £13.99 Audio Cassette

John Grisham’s well known for his court room thrillers, A Time to Kill being one of my favourites (namely because Samuel L. Jackson was astonishingly good as Carl Lee Hailey and made the story come alive)

The Innocent Man is read by Dennis Boutsikaris. His american accent was clear and likeable, and he was able to infuse an element of satire into the unfolding story. The story itself is unbelievable, and makes the police investigators in Ada, Oklahoma look like Del-Boy Trotter and his mates. The Innocent Man is about the diabolical investigation into the murder of Debra Carter, a 21 year-old cocktail waitress from Ada, Oklahoma. She was brutally raped and murdered in her own home in 1982. Glen Gore, who claimed to be a friend of Debra’s, stepped forward as a witness, telling police that he had seen Ron Williamson at the Coachlight bar bothering Debra on the night of the murder. From the moment you realise that this piece of information has been taken as fact by police, you know Ron Williamson is in big trouble. A man named Dennis Fritz also came under suspicion, because he was a close friend of Williamson and they were known to hang out together. Both were arrested, but with no real evidence against them, they were later released.

A few years later the police arrested Williamson and Fritz  again. By this time Williamson had been in and out of gaol for cheque fraud. Investigators used the testimony of a prison informer looking for early release as evidence for another arrest. The informer claimed that Williamson confessed to the killing whilst they shared a cell together. Prosecutors then bamboozled the jury with new DNA evidence which they didn’t understand. Hair found at the scene was ‘likely’ to be that of Williamson and Fritz. Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz were arrested again and found guilty. Fritz was given a life sentence while Williamson was sent to death row.

I found Williamson stereotypical of the American dream gone awry. He had been a promising basketball player. He was a star in Ada and left in 1971 to pursue his dreams of major league basketball and signed with the Oakland A’s. But, six years later he was back home with an arm injury and an escalating drink habbit. The fact that he couldn't hold down a job resulted in a new career of petty crime. He’d also started to show signs of mental illness, resulting in him moving in with his mother and sleeping twenty hours a day on her sofa.

There were flaws in the Police investigations. Glen Gore was never followed up on, although he had pointed a finger at Williamson. He said Williamson had been hassling Debra that evening. The fact was, several people had seen Gore talking heatedly to Debra in the Coachlight parking lot the night she died. Friends also reported a couple of worrying phone calls from Debra who wanted to be picked up because there was a ‘friend’ in her flat getting aggressive. Gore had a history of aggressive behaviour. At this point in the story i found myself throwing angree looks at my car stereo. Williamson was never given a fair trial at any point. Grisham settles on the fact that the lawyer was blind. Although competent in his field he'd never handled a criminal case before. DNA analysis results were used incompetently was.  It was a science that was so new jurors were easily led up the garden path. There was no substantial evidence against Williamson, who was found guilty anyway, and despite appeals, was sentenced to death. His friend Fritz was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Finally, in 1999, further developments in DNA testing revealed that neither Fritz nor Williamson had raped Debra Carter. Testing also proved that none of the hairs belonged to either of the men.

Fritz and Williamson were released in the spring of 1999. Later testing on the semen taken from the scene as evidence matched Glen Gore, the main witness at the trial. Gore had either slipped through the net when samples from the men of the town were taken, or he’d just been ignored.

Williamson later won a settlement in court for his conviction, but died in December 2004 in a nursing home aged 51 .