The Innocent Man by John Grisham

Well I just finished listening to The Innocent Man by John Grisham since I was cleaning my room all day and I even continued listening with the slow pace of the reader just to finish it. (I wasn't going to go buy it after having bought the audio book, but the guys who read these books aloud read awfully slow.) As it was I finished it and for some reason or another I never put it together until the ending that this book was based on a true story and not a piece of fiction. The entire time I held somewhat of a bias to the author's rather liberal stance on the death penalty and tone taken, but when I found out it was nonfiction I was taken a bit back. I completely understand the typical problems most people have with the death penalty and many of them are valid points. Many forms of the death penalty administered in various countries are cruel and unusual ways to die and there will be flaws in any system, but by and large I have to say that more often than not justice prevails. I realized from the beginning of the book that the author, John Grisham, has somewhat of a bias against the death penalty and it must be just fully so since he is the one going to the bank off of such a book. I do, however agree by and large with the main flaws pointed out in the court proceedings of Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz. I see the way the trial played out as an admonishment of the constitution, due process, and habeas corpus, which allowed for justice to prevail in the end. While I understand that people may agree or disagree with the death penalty, I think common ground can be achieved when one realizes that no system is perfect. The judicial system in the US may not be perfect, but the fact that rights are the superceding power makes the US the country I would most want to live in. Getting back to the Innocent Man one of the main questions that is being begged, is whether or not innocent people are being incarcerated and even possibly being put to death? I look at the system and after having taken a look at the innocenceproject.org it is obvious as it has been to me for quite some time that the answer is yes. Yes, there are innocent people who are in prison or on death row for a crime they had no part in. I would however take a different stance on what to do next. Some say we should abolish the death penalty since one can never have a definite answer as to whether the criminal actually committed the crime, and I would have to disagree. This thought process to me is akin to saying we should go back to feudalism since the idea of democracy with a congress, house, and president can never truly work since there will always be people who might not be properly represented. I would agree with anyone that no system is perfect and our first reaction should be to take the current system and purify it to the best of our abilities. Imagine how far these two men would have gotten if they had lawyers who didn't fall asleep in court or disregard evidence in court. These men were not allotted the second right offered to them at the time of arrest, a lawyer. If these men would have had competent lawyers then maybe they wouldn't have spent over a decade in prison awaiting death. There are so many problems that should be of greater focus, from the judges in the court cases, to the state of Oklahoma’s prison system, to their psychiatric wards, problems abound throughout the local, state, and even national government in relation to the due process of Ron and Fritz. This is one of the reasons that I feel one of the best ways anyone can make a difference regardless of their personal beliefs is to be an active citizen and partake in a role that could possible change just one of the problems presented in The Innocent Man.