THE INNOCENCE MAN
John Grisham

Century, £18.99

John Grisham’s latest legal thriller is unlike anything he has written before. Gone are the fictional characters and the larger-than-life stories of shady lawyers with their twists, intrigue and courtroom drama. In their place comes a real-life tale of corruption, incompetence and injustice.


Mr Grisham’s first work of non-fiction is nevertheless a hard-hitting white-knuckle ride through the inadequacies of the US legal system. It is regrettably a story we have heard all too often in recent years: of a system stifled by the almost desperate need to convict someone – anyone.



In the book, Mr Grisham recalls the shocking rape and murder of a 21-year-old cocktail waitress in a town in Oklahoma. For five years the police were unable to solve the crime, yet based on gut feeling they determined that the murderers were Ron Williamson and his friend Dennis Fritz. The only problem was that they did not have any evidence or real basis for such a conclusion.



However, that did not stop them. With the assistance of junk science and the ever ‘reliable’ testimonies of jailhouse snitches and convicts, the two were charged. Both were found guilty. Mr Fritz was sentenced to life imprisonment and Mr Williamson to death row. It is incomprehensible how anyone could have believed for one moment that these two men had anything to do with the crime, but unfortunately in the US, that is not always enough. Both men were eventually exonerated after 11 years’ incarceration.



While this book is centred around those two characters, other tales of incompetence and complacency in the system are touched on, be it on the part of the police, the scientists and even the courts themselves: allowing controversial confessions, the wanton disregard for justice, evidence tampering, and police brutality. This is a horrifying examination of a system in decay.



While Mr Grisham should probably be praised for writing such a book and supporting the ongoing debate in the US about its legal system, his style leaves much to be desired. The book is written in an almost statement-esque fashion. Mr Grisham had the chance to interview most of the leading players and read the crime reports, yet the reader gets the feeling that the fact that this was non-fiction restricted him from writing with any real passion. The prose is matter of fact and distant, and seems unnecessarily objective.



As such it is sometimes difficult to feel the genuine emotion for the characters that we might expect in a real-life tale. We are left wanting to understand Mr Williamson and Mr Fritz – their pain, their hopelessness – and it is disappointing that Mr Grisham does not offer us this insight.



Nevertheless, this is a terrifying reminder that the maxim that you are innocent until proven guilty does not always seem to apply in the US.



Jason M Hadden is a freelance journalist and solicitor-advocate