The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small TownThe Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town by John Grisham

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a very in-depth look at how Ron Williamson was convicted of a murder he didn't commit. The book is interesting but on the long side, but I'm glad Grisham went to the effort to write this.

It sounds like the following factors led to Williamson getting falsely convicted, in descending order of importance:
- Hairs found at the crime scene were determined to be a "match" of Williamson and a companion. In reality, hair analysis is waaaaay less accurate than it sounds and doesn't mean much. (this trial took place before DNA analysis became standard; in fact, DNA analysis is what eventually exonerated Williamson!)
- After extensive interrogation, Williamson told the police about a dream he had where he confessed to the murder, and that "evidence" was described to the jury without the context that it was a dream!
- "Jailhouse snitches" were given reduced sentences to say that they heard Williamson bragging about the crime while he was in jail. This is a sadly common practice.
- The police were under a lot of pressure to solve the crime, and were very convinced from the beginning that Williamson was guilty, to the point where they didn't even consider the last person the victim was seen with! (and that person, in fact, was guilty) It's not entirely clear why this was the case, although the police knew Williamson was a heavy drinker and somewhat erratic. Four years after the crime, the police convinced a palmprint analyst to take a second look at some critical evidence, and lo and behold the analyst came up with the result the police needed to arrest Williamson.

This is not even covering the fact that Williamson was clearly mentally ill, and he got much worse in prison.

While Williamson did get released from jail after 11 years, he didn't get any compensation or even an apology.

I heard about this book after reading this opinion article by John Grisham about wrongfully convicted people.

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