num_pages: 368
description: 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 A's, 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.
language: English
title: The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town
titlecomplete: The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town
genres: Law, Crime, Audiobook, Thriller, Biography, True Crime, History, Mystery, Nonfiction, Legal Thriller
ratings_count: 75285
places: Oklahoma, The United States of America
publisher: Doubleday