The complicated fact about the criminal justice system is that it’s the system that sends an innocent man to death row — with that man five days away from being injected with lethal poison — and it’s also the same system where that very man is exonerated and freed from prison. The reason for this complicated tug-and-pull of a system that deals with life-and-death is that the system is made up of men and women, and men and women are flawed, some detrimentally so, and some who are heroic in spite of their flaws. John Grisham, stepping into true-crime nonfiction, tackles these issues in his enthralling 2006 book, The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town.
Ron Williamson didn’t want the world; he just wanted baseball. He seemed destined to emerge from the small town of Ada, Oklahoma to become a Major League Baseball player. Instead, he was besieged by the follies of youth, the stunting of his athletic prowess by injury, the nearly insurmountable challenge of his various mental illnesses, and ultimately, the injustice of a system too narrowed in on him (and his “co-conspirator” Dennis Fritz). The once-destined-for-greatness kid became the “town crazy,” and when the shocking murder of Debbie Carter in 1982 occurs, the police and prosecutor turn to the “town crazy” as the culprit. This despite no physical evidence and questionable eyewitness and earwitness evidence.
In short, Prosecutor Bill Peterson, detectives Dennis Smith and Jerry Peters, the phony polygrapher Rusty Featherstone, and scores of others, including the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation Agent Gary Rogers, and hair analysis “expert,” Melvin Hett, had nothing. Which is to say, they had nothing against Williamson and Fritz, the two suspects they zeroed in on. Instead, they should have focused on Glen Gore, who witnesses pinpointed as the last to see Debbie alive, who had a history of violence against women, and whose physical evidence would have matched up to that found at the scene — a scene, by the way, horribly canvassed by the police because, shockingly, most police aren’t good at canvassing for evidence! (Not DNA, crucially, because it wasn’t in use yet.)
How many people, including Williamson and Fritz, have been convicted, sent to death row, and even executed because of shoddy police work, coerced confessions, Brady-violating and arrogant prosecutors, junk science (hair analysis, bite mark analysis, polygraphs, which aren’t admissible in court but still lead to police suspicion and charges, and so much more are not real science), jailhouse snitches lacking all credibility, and eyewitness and earwitness testimony also lacking in credibility? Well, if the small town of Ada, Oklahoma is anything to go by, we know of more than the cases of Williamson and Fritz, as outlined in Grisham’s book, because another murder happened in 1984 of Denice Haraway, and two men went down for that who are likely innocent.
Let’s also not forget the two judges on the case, and the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, all of whom didn’t see anything wrong with the state’s case, and the later convictions of Williamson and Fritz. Once in the system, making any sort of contact with it, it’s damn near irrevocable, and exoneration is a long, excruciatingly slow and costly journey. I forget the name of the judge presiding, but he excused Peterson’s Brady violation because they could address it … after the trial! Maddening.
I think out of everything — as frustrating as I find the coerced confessions by the police, the use of jailhouse snitches, the lazy ineptness of the judges to protect the rights of the accused, the shamelessness of so-called “experts” like Hett, and let’s not forget, either, the jury of 12 who believes all this nonsense — what frustrates me most about wrongful conviction cases is that the real killer(s) abscond from justice. Injustice is done at three different milestones: the wrongful conviction, the lack of a conviction of the real killer(s), and the excruciatingly long time it takes the system to recognize it’s error and overturn a conviction (if it does, and even when it does, like in this case, there was no apology, or recognition from the state, or compensation of any kind until they pushed a civil suit, which the settlement was largely funded by taxpayers because most of the key government officials are immune from fault!).
Specifically, though, it’s not just that the killer(s) of Carter and Haraway escaped justice because the system was focused on the wrong people, but here, Peterson essentially brow beat Peggy, Carter’s mom, into exhuming her body four years after the fact so that they could compare her palm print to a print left at the crime scene. Peterson and the detective on the case essentially wanted to reverse the detective’s previous finding that the print didn’t match Carter’s, i.e., the implication being it must’ve belonged to the killer. After exhumation, suddenly, the detective found the print did match with Carter, thus eliminating a mysterious unknown killer, and alas, that was the first step toward charging and convicting Williamson and Fritz. Appalling and disgusting, and zero accountability for it.
And don’t even get me started on the system that steps in after conviction when Williamson is on death row (Fritz received a life sentence), and how awful the inmates are treated. Or the eagerness with which the state kills in the first place. They’re going to die anyway, so, let’s not treat them humanely, let’s harass them, barely feed them, and their living conditions are downright intolerable, even after building a supposedly state-of-the-art new death row facility in 1990. When you are are “in the care” of the state, the state is duty-bound to protect your well-being, whether you’re on death row or not. In Williamson’s case, he deteriorated extraordinarily fast because of the horrid conditions coupled with his myriad untreated mental illnesses. He was a man in his late 40s who looked like he was in his 60s.
Thankfully, there are heroes in this story. The lawyers and health care officials who spoke and worked on Williamson’s behalf; the Innocence Project and the advent of DNA exonerations; Williamson’s always supportive sisters, Annette and Renee, who never gave up on him; and U.S. District Court Judge Frank Seay, who granted Williamson a new trial and said, “God help us, if ever in this great country we turn our heads while those who have not had fair trials are executed. That almost happened in this case.” Here’s the key in that statement: Judge Seay wasn’t even saying Williamson was exonerated and innocent. He was merely arguing for Williamson to get a fair trial, what was constitutionally owed to him. And still, Peterson and the others railed against Seay’s decision. Maddening, I say. Even after exoneration and freedom, Peterson still held the threat of coming after Williamson and Fritz over their heads. Just unbridled arrogance and some measure of evil.
After bouncing around 17 different living situations and going in and out of sobriety (and medication, for that matter), Williamson died five years after his exoneration from cirrhosis of the liver. At least, if there is solace in his short-lived freedom, it’s that he didn’t die an unduly convicted rapist and murderer.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t beat the drum I always beat in cases like this: Do not talk to the police. They are not your friends. Even if you know you are innocent and just want to clear your name, it does you no good to talk to the police without a lawyer. Get a lawyer. Protect yourself.
As you can imagine, I could go on and on about this case and the myriad injustices, but also the beautiful moments, like the Innocence Project stepping in and Williamson’s brilliant, tireless lawyer, Mark Barrett, who fill me with hope. But I’ll stop there. Like I said, Grisham’s book is incredibly absorbing, particularly for my fellow true-crime nerds out there. You will devour it in days and be as enraged as I am, but also find solace in knowing that there are those among us who will not sit idly by while an injustice is occurring. They are what make our country great.
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