Ya wanna get pissed? Read the Innocent Man by John Grisham

[BOSSHOG]

I could have accepted this as good fiction writing but it is all true. Incompetent prosecutors and police put an innocent man through hell.

Read this book and you will believe that the Ada Oklahoma prosecuting Attorney and members of the police department rely on rush limbaugh and faux news for guidance.

A horrific true story, extremely well crafted by a master of fiction.

[acmejack]

1. I'll buy it at the store in a bit.

Fixing to go grocery shopping. Have to or I'll starve, I'll pick up the book too. Sounds like a page turner!

[RoyGBiv]

2. Read this as well ...

_Dreams of Ada_

http://www.amazon.com/Dreams-Ada-Robert-Mayer/dp/0767926897

Grisham notes having read this during his initial research at the recommendation of several people in the area. It's about the disappearance of an employee from a convenience store on the edge of town, the arrest of two individuals for her murder, and the ensuing investigation and trial. The current revision has an epilogue of sorts that discusses events that took place after the book's first publication, such as the actual body of the woman being found. (The trial and conviction for murder of these two individuals took place before a body was even found.)

I'm from Ada, btw. I worked at the store from which this woman was abducted, and my manager was the person hired as her replacement. My grandmother had also been a teacher who had Karl Fotenot, one of those convicted, in her classes.

Odd that such a small, seemingly insignificant town could inspire not one, but two books like this. Ada has a notoriously crooked police force, but then so do a lot of small towns in rural areas of the country. I have several stories about it I could tell myself, such as going into the basement of the police station once during a tornado warning and finding about two dozen, mature marijuana plants, in pots, on a table off in a side-room, with grow-lights hanging over them. (I was a member of what was called Civil Defense at the time, our primary responsibility being storm spotting, and the police station basement was our headquarters.) I took note of it, but we had more important things to do at the time than ask about it. We did our duty for the evening, and when we came back into the headquarters later that night, the plants were gone.

Interesting place. Some UFO-enthusiasts insist Ada is a place where aliens landed in ancient times in a huge craft, and that this accounts for the geography of the place. (Most of the town is in sort of a "bowl.")

[Kenergy]

4. Did you know Tommy Ward and Karl?

Or Ron Williamson?

[RoyGBiv]

5. My grandmother knew Karl ...

She was his teacher for several years at a school called Byng, which is a small community about 10 miles north of Ada. All it is today is a school and some farms. None of this is relevant, but I thought I'd mention it anyway. Byng became what it is because the superintendent of what was at one time called New Bethel simply wasn't a racist. Ada was segregated, although not officially, which means non-whites were allowed to *try* to go to school there but rarely succeeded. The superintendent of Byng saw in this an opportunity and so openly recruited black and especially Indian students. The school got a lot of money from this and grew. It now occupies 77 acres of land, to which the school district holds mineral rights, even though only a fraction of that is used for the school. At some point natural gas and oil deposits were found, and the money from this and the influx of minority students was used to improve the school. It was one of the first schools in the nation to have a women's basketball team, started by Bertha Frank Teague (now in the Basketball Hall of Fame), and produced more national merit scholars than any school of its size in the nation during an extended period of time. When I went there, it was *the* place to go if you wanted your kid to get an education. Ada was the football school, while Byng didn't even have a football team. We had athletics, focused on basketball and baseball, and we regularly stomped Ada in scholastic meets and those athletic events in which we did participate.

Anyway, I didn't know any of them personally and was too young to have known Ron Williamson. I apparently met Karl when I was really young, him being in my grandmother's class, which I went to at the end of my school day, but I don't remember anything about him. I seem to recall Williamson being a subject of discussion among the adults when I was a kid, but I couldn't remember the details. I hadn't thought about it in years, until this book came out.

There's another book, the name of which I can't remember, written by a former highway patrolman about the murder of some girl scouts near the area. (Some dim memory suggests the title was something about crying for the children.) He was from Ada, and I did know him and his daughter, whom I dated briefly. Last name was Northcutt, and he was an investigator of the crime. IIRC, he partially blamed corruption in Ada for the killer never being found.

The author of _Dreams of Ada_ was an acquaintance of the Ward family, which provided enough justification in some people's minds to dismiss him entirely. I actually have a bit of an issue with him myself because his book focused heavily on Tommy Ward, whose sentence was later turned to life in prison rather than execution, in part because of that book, yet Karl remained on death row. If any part of the events that sent them to jail were true, Ward was the instigator, and Tommy was the follower. That's what my grandmother called him, a follower, not intelligent enough to really plan out such a thing but always looking to please those he considered friends, up to and including doing things that were wrong at their urging.

Regardless, after I read the first chapter, I knew I was reading the words of someone who knew that community very well and had done his research. He called it a "convenience store culture," which it is. The book explains what that means better than I can.

[Z_I_Peevey]

10. The title of the book about the Girl Scout murders is

Someone Cry for the Children: The Unsolved Girl Scout Murders of Oklahoma and the Case of Gene Leroy Hart. I understand it's quite hard to find.

[RoyGBiv]

11. That's it ...

And it was Dick Wilkerson who was the HiPo. I get him and Rocky Northcutt confused all the time, for absolutely no good reason I can think of.

Hard to find, eh? Now where did I put my first edition ... :-)

[Sequoia]

24. Ah ha....it's the aliens what did it!

That bit of UFO news is very interesting.

[RoyGBiv]

25. Oh yeah ...

And if I introduced you to some of the people who live there, you'd really believe.

This is of course the town with the newspaper that printed as a front page story:

"BLACK HOLE FOUND NEAR SUN!"

Friend of mine framed that.

[Sequoia]

28. I'm staying away from that state, but I'll watch the musical instead.

Is the corn really high as an elephant's eye?

[RoyGBiv]

29. I. Hate. That. Song.

I hate all those songs.

Scene: Entering the foyer of a hotel room in Vicksburg, MS. Double-curved staircase leading up to something like a balcony, behind which is the hallway that leads to rooms. About 12 people are there on the balcony. It's around 9pm. I just drove from Oklahoma there to meet all these people who came from all parts of the country for a gathering. I open the door, and the first thing I hear ...

Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooklahoma in this booming bass voice (that would be Chuck, ya bastard) and then a sing-a-long starts ... They'd even bribed the hotel staff to join in.

Anyway ... I dunno about the corn, but the weeds would probably hide a family of elephants.

[Sequoia]

31. I actually like that musical. Rod Steiger is such a great actor.

But then again, I like corny stuff.

[73formula]

34. I think you're mistaken

Besides for the owners of the store, MacAnally's (Mac & his wife), there were only 2 or 3 other people that worked at that store on the East outskirts of Ada. If you are who you claim, then I remember you. However, the guy who worked with Denise quit shortly after I was hired as her replacement. Yes... ME, and I was NOT your manager. I lived in the apartments adjacent to the store, and was a frequent visitor to purchase quick items. I exchanged several hellos, and a few quick conversations with Denise. I was looking for a part time job while I was attending East Central State University, and it wasn't until Denise was abducted that I was asked if I was still interested in work on one particular visit to the store by Mac's wife.

On a side note, there was a creepy guy who lived in the apartment building as my wife & I did, and was an acquaintence with one of the guys accused of abducting and killing Denise. I specifically remember the creep telling us that they had bragged about what they had done to the girl. Who knows for sure if this slimeball was telling the truth or not, but nonetheless, it was pretty convincing. It's hard to say what happened for sure, but I will agree with you on one thing, the Ada police department was no doubt crooked during the time when I lived in Ada (early-mid 80's).

[RoyGBiv]

35. Interesting ...

Let me rephrase ... the guy who was my manager told me at one point he had been hired as her replacement. He may not have known, in fact, or he could have been altering the story a bit.

It's immaterial actually. I was just noting that I worked there and that the guy who was my manager had known Denice.

I didn't work there until about 4 years after all this took place. The McAnally's didn't live or work there at the time. He lived near Tulsa then, IIRC.

[Kenergy]

3. I agree

I just finished reading it today (started it yesterday) and it's a good read.

[matt819]

6. Add another vote

Finished it last night. An indictment of the death penalty as well as an astounding tale of corruption, stupidity, and just plain nastiness in America's heartland. Dreams of Ada is next.

[RoyGBiv]

7. FWIW ...

I'm going to post a review of _The Innocent Man_ in a few days, written from the perspective of someone who knows more than a little about the community and events in question. (A lot of stuff came back to me as I read the book I had forgotten I had forgotten, and some things in the book simply defy my understanding as someone who witnessed some of the things that took place.)

In brief summary, I think this is a good book. I do not understand why Grisham wrote it in the context of non-fiction, by which I mean I have come to expect good, narrative, fictional prose from him, and that good, narrative, fictional prose remains. I found enough glaring errors, both of omission and perspective, in the first chapter to fill another book, things anyone who even researched the rather thin and vacant Ada newspaper would have known were off base at least. It's the little things that bug me really, such as portraying Ada as an archetype that disappeared 30 years before the events in the book took place. I could narrow down where he got certain tidbits of information (or more precisely perceptions) to one or two people who have always, as apart of their job description basically, portrayed those ideas for "outsiders" who ask questions. In investigating a travesty of justice, Grisham was in some respects duped into cementing convenient lies while in the process of exposing a certain level of truth, a level that was allowed to be known.

As just one brief, mostly unimportant, example, I was born in that town in 1969. Neither I in any of the homes I occupied after moving out on my mother's house (one of which was 15 miles from the nearest neighbor aside from my landlord) nor my parents the entire time I grew up ever even conceived of the possibility of not locking their doors at night or when they left the house, yet Grisham focuses on this "Mayberry" style of trust as "typical." That's an overused, nonsensical archetype that simply does not have any relation to reality. In other words, Grisham introduced some of the tools of the novelist in a book he claims is non-fiction. In the context of a novel I would have had few problems with the characterization, not only with the example mentioned but with a stream of others. The book is both fiction and non-fiction. The events, in summary, are real. The story of an innocent man sentenced to death is real. The corruption is real. (He pretty well nailed Bill Peterson, about whom I've written on this very forum without naming him.) The details aren't necessarily.

As a more concrete example, I attended a church mentioned in this book during the years portrayed in the book. Grisham seems to be relying on invented stories about what took place there. From the age of 0 to 14 or so, on Sunday and Wednesday, I attended that church and never saw anything like some of the events he describes. Several of those years cross with years Grisham was supposedly portraying.

_Dreams of Ada_ is actually a bit better in this regard. (The "convenience store culture" characterization is about the most accurate thing I've ever seen written describing a real, small Oklahoma town.) I have a very big problem with the author's major premise, which almost unquestioningly accepts the rather absurd notion that Tommy Ward had a dream that he killed Donna Denise Haraway and for whatever reason decided to go to the police station, and for no other reason than him being disturbed by a dream, told a cop about it and for some other reason suddenly found himself arrested for having that "dream." Robert Mayer, the author, was an acquaintance/friend of the Ward family and unfortunately took a lot of the information they offered as uncontested fact. He, like Grisham based on an initial reading, got the conclusions right for many of the wrong reasons, perhaps because he and/or they spent their time talking to the wrong people.

I got the impression both authors got a little too close to the "accused" to be considered truly impartial judges.

[Dulcinea]

8. I got it for Christmas, & am part way through it.

I already feel sorry for Tommy Ward & Karl Fontenot. Why were their convictions not overturned?

[RoyGBiv]

9. They were, sorta ...

The original convictions were thrown out and both were ordered new trials. Both were re-convicted, this time on more substantial evidence, and both are serving lesser sentences than they were originally given. Neither Robert Mayer, the author of _Dreams of Ada_, nor Grisham truly address the new trial and additional evidence. A lot of what you see about this case is from the first trial, which was a joke, and Grisham himself confuses the two liberally.

One big problem with the first trial was that no body had even been found. (And the book about it was written before the body was found, this being part of its focus.) At the time the case was tried, this was incredibly unusual, and a very good criticism of that trial was that the prosecution had not even proved that a crime had been committed, much less that the individuals on trial were responsible for it. Also at issue is the fact that the crime scene was never appropriately canvassed for evidence, in particular evidence that could be used in a DNA test. The counter at the MacAnally's where Haraway worked was wiped clean even before fingerprints were taken. A cigarette was still burning at the time the empty store was first discovered, yet this was thrown away. Etc...

As an aside, I will note here that a lot of people, including Mayer, got a lot of details about all this wrong themselves. It may seem insignificant, but when criticizing individuals and institutions for such things, one would do well to work on those details themselves. I get really annoyed at "true-crime" writers who can't even get locations correct. Grisham is guilty of this on many, many occasions, which is especially annoying to me as I visualize these locations in my head while being aware that the geography is completely wrong. Mayer also did this and perpetrated continued misunderstanding because of it. As a simple example, the location of the store from which Haraway was abducted is wrong. This is an *important* detail in the context of the investigation, considering the disagreement between where the body was found and where Tommy's supposed dream/confession said it would be found. There were three MacAnally's stores in Ada at the time. The one mentioned in the book is not the one from which she was taken.

[hamerfan]

12. Makes me want to avoid Oklahoma

in my travels, except that this crap happens everywhere. The line often quoted in legal circles is, "Anyone can get a guilty man convicted; it takes a good DA to get an innocent man convicted".
Since I see most of the criminal justice system as a moneymaker for the state, I believe the above quote.
dumpbush

[Z_I_Peevey]

13. The D.A. has his own website up, for those who are

interested in the case.

http://www.billpetersondistrictattorney.com/

[gbate]

16. Wow, that guy is really going through a lot to prove he's not responsible for what he did. Idiot.

[raccoon]

14. Dick Estell is reading this on Radio Reader now.

I listened once and got hooked in.

I have it on audiobook from my library and am going to listen to it as soon as I get through my current audiobook.

[gbate]

15. I just finished this and I could not put it down all weekend.

What a heart-wrenching account of injustice.

[raccoon]

17. I finished it recently. A must-read for everybody, I think.

I wonder how many false confessions there are in the US.

[idgiehkt]

18. thanks for mentioning it

I've read everything of his I can get my hands on but must have missed that one. I'll check it out.

[raccoon]

19. I want to post this review of this book, which is really worth the read.

Publisher Comments:

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 As, 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.


http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=2-0385517238-3

[Sequoia]

20. I found this on the shelf in the library.

Usually it has a very long waiting list but they always have a drop in copy for people. I had gone there to pick up a book on hold and a little voice told me to go look on the new non-fiction shelf and there it was! That poor Ron though, even as a young child problems were starting to develop. He mentioned religion as being a factor to his being messed up in the head and considering all the times he had to go to church stuff I might have to agree to a point. I had to go to church all the time as a kid and nowadays I won't go unless it's a wedding, funeral or just to sight see the beautiful RC places like St. Patrick's in New York.

[RoyGBiv]

21. I went to that church ...

Our paths crossed, actually, even though I never knew him as a person and didn't realize they had crossed until talking to my mother about this. I knew his family. He wasn't there much, that I recall.

The church didn't screw up Ron. Ron was mentally ill, and he didn't get proper treatment. And, as the book argues, he was treated unjustly by the so-called justice system, basically because his mental illness and lack of treatment caused him to act in bizarre ways. He was not an innocent little lamb that was simply railroaded. He abused women, was violent, drank to vast excess, and needed a lot of treatment for many, many things. That made him a convenient target.

I have no fond memories of that church and a lot of bad ones, but some of the people were okay. I did like the pastor that was there when I was young, mostly because of the kindnesses he showed my grandmother when she was dying and for having my back when I confronted members of my family for their, in my view, non-Christian attitude toward her imminent death. ("If you think being a Christian means being at church on Sunday instead of with a family member who is suffering in a hospital, then you know nothing of Christ," was one of his lines.) He was not the same pastor that refused to allow the church to be used to Ron's "freedom" celebration, FWIW. And, he didn't screw up Ron.

[Sequoia]

23. I'm sure you are correct.

Some churches are mean but Ron could've blamed everyone and every thing. It's too bad, he was so loved as a kid and then things got out of control. Mental illness is either hidden, denied, or just not taken care of in the early stages. Some people are very ashamed if they have a family member who has mental illness. I know all about that. And for sure he was not an innocent lamb, that's as clear as a bell. Thanks.

[RoyGBiv]

26. Now see, here's the problem ...

It's too bad, he was so loved as a kid and then things got out of control.

That comment sorta hints at it.

Ron was an athlete, and at Byng and Asher, baseball athletes are gods. It's the same in Ada for football athletes. They are treated like gods. They have all the girls, all the leniency, all the adoration, headlines ... for a kid in a small town, it's a kind of fame.

And then it goes away. The suicide rate for former football athletes from Ada is staggering. (I don't have numbers off the top of my head, but I saw it while in college there, and it stunned me ... like double the average.) Ron was a victim of that system that treated him like a god, and then when he went out into the real world, it was all gone.

There are several stories here ... one is kinda of a Friday Night Lights story, the other the one Grisham/Mayer wrote. They belong together, imo.

He had a good family, or what I know of it. My mother was friends with his sister Annette, and they supported him as much as they possibly could.

[Sequoia]

27. Whoa...that's so true for small towns.

I dated a guy who was a football hero, even saw his award at the school where I went also years later. So many parents and adults put everything on kids, especially for sports like football. But it seems Ron, as a kid, was already showing signs of what he was to become. He got his way way too many times because no one could tell him no. I'm halfway through the book now. It's good your mom was friends with Annette, she seemed like a really good sister to Ron.

[RoyGBiv]

30. They believed the hype ...

I can't fault the family for it. Everyone *wants* to hear that their kid can be great at something, especially when you're dirt poor and that thing could conceivably bring your entire family out of poverty. The coaches of these teams are the problem, imo. This recruiting thing they do, which *should* have been explored more in the book I believe, is very real and often very damaging. They fill these kids' heads with outlandish dreams (dreams are fine, but let's stay somewhere at least near reality) of being the next Mick or the next Aikman or whoever, and then when that doesn't happen, they have nothing else.

That was Ron. He was a *great* high school baseball player, and in Asher especially (he was recruited there from Byng, which does actually force student athletes to be students before they are athletes), great high school baseball players all think they're gonna make the big bucks and be famous. This is part of what motivates them to have great teams year-in and year-out. But then, one day, there is no more high school, and the New York Yankees don't give a damn if you single-handedly won half your games for that little high school in that two-horse town.

Ron is also a victim of Reagan, I might add. The emergence of his most serious problems coincided tragically with Reagan's gutting of the mental health system.

[Sequoia]

32. Reagan! I remember when that happened and suddenly

those poor people were homeless and could be seen in Santa Monica, CA where I was living at the time. It seemed to happen overnight.

[raccoon]

22. Last night, Dateline on NBC was about the case in THE INNOCENT MAN

and another case in Ada, OK, where 2 men were similarly railroaded.

[Z_I_Peevey]

33. Judge dismisses DA's libel suit against Grisham.

http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?articleID=20080917_12_MUSK735778


For those of you who might be interested in this case.