The Innocent M Murder And Injustice In A Small Town

The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town is a fact-based, unique, written novel by John Grisham. The book is about Ronald Williamson and Dennis Fritz of Ada, Oklahoma. Both men were sentenced in 1988 for the rape and murder of Debra Carter in Ada. Ron was an old minor league baseball player who was penalized to death. After serving 11 years on death row, he was protected by DNA evidence and other factual points by the Innocence Project group and was released in 1999. Dennis Fritz was convicted and given a life sentence, leaving behind his mother and daughter. His wife died seven years prior to the murder. Fritz had to work hard to get his own second trial because he didn’t have the help that most people on death row received. These two men seemed guilty because of their life situations and their personality when in the beginning they should have looked at suspicious Glen Gore.

The author’s purpose of writing the novel was to show how innocent people can get convicted of crimes they didn’t commit.

This is something that happens all the time in everyday life. While reading the book it seems John Grisham was neutral towards the story. John Grisham seemed like he was telling an interesting story to get feedback from others. Grisham wanted readers to be aware of the unfair trial, but also wanted to know how they feel towards the situation. The author’s arguments showed both sides of the story. He showed the way two innocent men could have been accused because of obvious reason such as their personalities and he also showed how it was wrong and both men should have had a better trial. The author didn’t show any feelings in the book. He told the story exactly how he was told as he did his research for the

book.
This book should be very important to our society because we should be able to recognize the ethical and unethical things that happen around the world. The fact that an innocent man could have lost his life to something he knew nothing about was serious. The fact that Fritz’s daughter was raised without a mother and a father was important because of course it put a burden on this child’s life. This could happen to anyone, if you are in the wrong place at the wrong time you could be accused of a murder or any crime. Society can cause people to be looked at all different ways because of the hardships of their life. Some people that accused these men didn’t take the time out to understand why Ron was always drunk or why Fritz was still living with his mother.
The book as a whole was an attention grabber. The title made me want to pick it up and read as soon as I could. The book gave me a complete understanding of who Ron Williams and Dennis Fritz were. Without the breakdown of their lives the book might not have been that interesting. Although there were many good points, some of the parts bored me. The book focused a little too much on a specific situation, for example, talking about what Fritz daughter was doing for two pages pulled my attention away from the main points. The book should have stayed focused on the crime, witnesses, the men accused and the police. The book continued to discuss irrelevant people too much.
It was wrong how the police pinned the blame on Fritz and Williamson without even finding any evidence that matched the trial. They were basically accused because they were unemployed men who drunk a lot and went bar hopping. This could have been any two men in Ada that did these things. But then again I like the fact that they searched the men backgrounds to see the activities and crimes they previously committed. I believe it was unethical to give them the death sentence without any eye witnesses or proof. But it was ethical that the two men were looked at because they were drunks. They went to many bars. Fritz could have been lonely without his wife and Ron was accused of rape previously. The way the novel ended was a good way to end the book without telling if Gore (the man who most readers probably thought committed the crime by reading chapters 1 and 2) was guilty or not even though accused, they never told us the details of what actually happened.