Examples Of Murder And Injustice In A Small Town By John Grisham

John Grisham, the author of The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town, explores a legitimate criminal case that rattled the small town of Ada, Oklahoma from 1982 and on. Debbie Carter, a 21-year-old woman who worked at a bar called the Coachlight, was brutally murdered in her own home on December 7, 1982. She was found in her bedroom, covered in bruises and messages written in ketchup and surrounded by evidence, such as a bloody palm print, hair, fingerprints, and more messages. The police department began searching for any possible suspects immediately following the death, specifically two possible suspects because they were convinced that the crime could not have been committed single-handedly. Two men, Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz, eventually made their ways onto the suspect list, and became the strongest of the suspects. Williamson, who was once a star baseball athlete, had ventured down the wrong path one too many times following a break in his sports career. Prior to his suspicion in the Debbie Carter murder, Williamson had been arrested for two rapes, one instance …show more content…
After DNA testing was conducted and compared from the crime scene to the men, it was determined that there was no possibility that either Williamson or Fritz could have murdered Debbie Carter. They were freed in the spring of 1999, but did not receive any compensation for their physical, emotional, or psychological abuses until they filed a lawsuit against the individuals involved in the first trial. Fritz was able to return to as normal as possible version of the life he had before the verdict, but the same was not true for Williamson, who maintained an unstable lifestyle physically and psychologically. Williamson died in 2004, only five years after he gained freedom from his