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3.75 AVERAGE
3.75 AVERAGE
Great crime non-fiction. Good, flawed characters
So many twists and turns. Flawed characters guilty of bad luck and local biases. Stranger than fiction. Makes you want to be a lawyer.
So many twists and turns. Flawed characters guilty of bad luck and local biases. Stranger than fiction. Makes you want to be a lawyer.
John Grisham‘s first non-fiction.
quite
the storyteller and uncovered, dismal representation of the accused murderers.
Helped me understand why the innocence project is so successful. The innocent man is far from a model citizen. One of the stars in my opinion is his
Annette
,
who
practically spent her life helping her
brother
what
a
patient woman.
quite
the storyteller and uncovered, dismal representation of the accused murderers.
Helped me understand why the innocence project is so successful. The innocent man is far from a model citizen. One of the stars in my opinion is his
Annette
,
who
practically spent her life helping her
brother
what
a
patient woman.
informative
Well written, passionate story. Great job telling the story of these men who were so wronged. Infuriating at times but a story that needed to be told.
This book really rocked me to my core. The utter ineptitude of the police force and lawyers involved... I really can't say ...
This book is a masterpiece of nonfiction writing from Grisham. It reads like a novel and, at times, is so appalling that you want it to be fiction rather than real life. It follows the stories of Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz, who were wrongfully convicted of murder and sent to Death Row in Oklahoma as a result of shoddy and perhaps corrupt police work, a district attorney who worked with tunnel vision and a preconceived idea about the guilty parties, and a judicial system that is stacked against defendants who can't afford to hire decent attorneys.
I defy anyone who supports the death penalty to read this book and finish it with an unchanged (or, at the least, unshaken) opinion. This is must reading for anyone who cares about the state of the justice system in this country. Highly, highly recommended.
I defy anyone who supports the death penalty to read this book and finish it with an unchanged (or, at the least, unshaken) opinion. This is must reading for anyone who cares about the state of the justice system in this country. Highly, highly recommended.
emotional
hopeful
medium-paced
This was a thorough, chilling, and heartbreaking recount primarily of Mr. Ronald William's ordeal, along with a lesser recount of that of his fellow exoneree for the same crime, Mr. Dennis Fritz.
It's also a harrowing insight into the inhumane torture of the Oklahoma prison system, particularly death row, the state's neglect and improper handling of inmates' physical and mental health, and the corruption, flawed single-mindedness, and ineptitude of the prosecution. This case has so many of the benchmarks of many wrongful convictions - incentivised jailhouse snitches, junk science, withheld exculpatory evidence, fabricated evidence, and an extremely dubious "confession".
Also highlighted, though in varying degrees of detail, are the horrifying ordeals of other Oklahoma convicts and self-proclaimed innocent men, Mr. Tommy Ward and Mr. Karl Fontenot, and exoneree, Mr. Gregory Wilhoit, among others.
If you are unfamiliar with the world of innocence work and wrongful convictions, this is an excellent and thorough, albeit painful, primer, with an unfortunately bittersweet ending that still serves to highlight the toll that prison conditions take on longterm health. As someone who has been interested in wrongful convictions for well over a decade, and even having known the broad strokes of the case going into this book, this recounting still chilled me to the bone and left me enraged and crying at times; it's definitely an emotional ride as much as it is an informative one.
I highly recommend this book.
It's also a harrowing insight into the inhumane torture of the Oklahoma prison system, particularly death row, the state's neglect and improper handling of inmates' physical and mental health, and the corruption, flawed single-mindedness, and ineptitude of the prosecution. This case has so many of the benchmarks of many wrongful convictions - incentivised jailhouse snitches, junk science, withheld exculpatory evidence, fabricated evidence, and an extremely dubious "confession".
Also highlighted, though in varying degrees of detail, are the horrifying ordeals of other Oklahoma convicts and self-proclaimed innocent men, Mr. Tommy Ward and Mr. Karl Fontenot, and exoneree, Mr. Gregory Wilhoit, among others.
If you are unfamiliar with the world of innocence work and wrongful convictions, this is an excellent and thorough, albeit painful, primer, with an unfortunately bittersweet ending that still serves to highlight the toll that prison conditions take on longterm health. As someone who has been interested in wrongful convictions for well over a decade, and even having known the broad strokes of the case going into this book, this recounting still chilled me to the bone and left me enraged and crying at times; it's definitely an emotional ride as much as it is an informative one.
I highly recommend this book.
*instead of 3 stars I would say this is about 3.5 stars
If you cannot get through a slow beginning, this is not the book for you! I loved the last 100-200 pages of this book, but the beginning started off very slow. The beginning got into a lot of seemingly unnecessary backstory of characters that seemed to drag on for awhile. Many details of Ron’s backstory seemed repeat themselves often, such as when talking about Ron’s baseball career. I also wish they would have given the backstory of characters as they were introduced into the main plot instead of at the very beginning. I did begin to enjoy the book as it discussed the trial, Ron’s time on death row, and the appeals process. I found the legal side of this book to be extremely interesting, and I wish the book would have gotten to the legal processes sooner. It would have worked better for the story in my opinion if the bits of backstory would have been put in throughout the book as opposed to just at the beginning of the book. I also would have liked Ron’s mental health to have been explored more, though I understand it may have been hard to find information on it. I think I would have enjoyed this story more had it been in podcast or documentary format.
If you cannot get through a slow beginning, this is not the book for you! I loved the last 100-200 pages of this book, but the beginning started off very slow. The beginning got into a lot of seemingly unnecessary backstory of characters that seemed to drag on for awhile. Many details of Ron’s backstory seemed repeat themselves often, such as when talking about Ron’s baseball career. I also wish they would have given the backstory of characters as they were introduced into the main plot instead of at the very beginning. I did begin to enjoy the book as it discussed the trial, Ron’s time on death row, and the appeals process. I found the legal side of this book to be extremely interesting, and I wish the book would have gotten to the legal processes sooner. It would have worked better for the story in my opinion if the bits of backstory would have been put in throughout the book as opposed to just at the beginning of the book. I also would have liked Ron’s mental health to have been explored more, though I understand it may have been hard to find information on it. I think I would have enjoyed this story more had it been in podcast or documentary format.
informative
sad
tense
medium-paced