ACSBlog: The Blog of the American Constitution Society

By Martin Magnusson, Editor-at-Large

For the first time in his career, author John Grisham has written a non-fiction book. The Innocent Man, due to be released on October 10, is the true story of an innocent man who was falsely convicted and spent over a decade on death row. Many death penalty activists are hoping that this book will reinvigorate a national debate about capital punishment.

The subject of Grisham's new book is Ron Williamson. Mr. Williamson was a star athlete who was drafted by the Oakland A's in 1971. His major league aspirations, though, were stymied by injuries, alcoholism and mental illness. After his retirement from baseball at the age of twenty-five, Mr. Williamson moved into his mother's home. He struggled with undiagnosed mental illness and had difficulty remaining employed. In 1982, a local woman was brutally raped and murdered; police suspected that Mr. Williamson may have been involved because he was a regular at the diner where she worked and she had told friends that he made her nervous. Five years later, he was arrested, charged with capital murder and convicted. Mr. Williamson's conviction may have been secured, in part, because he was denied his medication by prison guards. Accordingly, his courtroom behavior was wild and erratic.

Mr. Williamson subsequently spent twelve years on death row and came within five days of being executed. While incarcerated, he tried to kill himself several times. Often, guards would find him pacing his cell and screaming that he was innocent.

The Innocence Project was eventually able to show, through DNA evidence, that Mr. Williamson was not the murderer. In 1999, Mr. Williamson was exonerated, in what many view as a particularly powerful moment in the innocence movement. Although Mr. Williamson's story has already been featured on an episode of Frontline, the Grisham novel promises to reach a much wider audience.

In a recent event at the University of Virginia School of Law, Mr. Grisham noted that

Even if you support the death penalty, you cannot support the death penalty system as it stands in the U.S. My one hope is that people realize this system we have is simply too unfair to continue.