Five years to solve her crime. They thought they solved it. They got the wrong guys, and they convicted the wrong guys and sent them to prison. Sent one to death row. Ron williamson went to death row. He had never met deborah carter. And he spent 11 years in prison and was exonerated 10 years ago, 1999, almost 10 years exactly. But he spent a total of 12 years in prison for the murder of deborah carter, and he never met her. Host who was ron williamingson . Guest he was a man i never met, i never heard of him. He was one of the first big, notorious dna exonerations in the late 90. And i met him when i read his obituary. So i never got to see him, obviously. But he was a fascinating character. When he was younger, many people in his small corner of oklahoma thought ron was the next mickey mantle. And ron certainly thought so. He had a nice ego. And he was a second round draft pick in 1972 of the oakland as and went off to seek major league glory and thought he was going to make it. Never came close. Had a bunch of injuries, didnt take care of himself, started drinking and drug thing and drugging and, you know, pretty wild life style. Crashed and burned in the minor leagues. When he was 25 or 26 years old, began showing the first signs of some type of mental illness. That was eventually diagnosed as being bipolar. All the wheels came off for Ron Williamson. He didnt help himself. A lot of selfmedicating with booze and drugs. And in 1986 or 87, he was arrested for the murder of deborah carter. Again, a woman he never met. Host why did you choose this story to be your only work of nonfiction . Guest well, it was host 20 novels . Guest 22 21 novels now and 3 book of nonfirst. 1 book of nonfiction. Im not trained as a journalist. I never thought about it. Im a hour. Ooh im a novelist e. Thats the way i think. I create fictionalized at the same time, im always hooking for good stories. Im always on the prowl for good stories. I never thought it would be a real one. I read rons obituary in the New York Times early in december of 2004 host nobody steered you to it . Guest stumbled across it. Opened the paper one day, there was his obituary. There was a picture of ron in court in ada, oklahoma, in april of 1999, the day he was exonerated. Same courtroom from which hed been convicted and sent off to die. This is when the photo was taken 12 years later, and he e and i were the same age, same race, same religion, same part of the world. He grew up in a maul town in oklahoma, i grew up in a small town in arkansas and mississippi and louisiana. A lot of similarities. A lot of similarities. And i thought how could this guy go to death row for 11 years and come within 5 days of being executed . I mean, he was a dead man. Oklahoma was about to stand him in and lethally inject him. They had it all planned. And hed given up. He was. He was insane. Nobody cared about that except his family. It was too good. Plus there was the baseball angle. I dreamed of playing Major League Baseball like every kid on my street. I never got close. But the fact that ron was a second round draft pick, i knew how good you had to be to be drafted. But to be picked the number one player out of the state of oklahoma in the 1972 draft, i knew that he had to be real good. Anyway, all the pieces came together. It was just too good of a story. And once i got into it, i realized i couldnt fictionalize it. I was tempted. I thought about it at first, because i didnt want to do all the work. I didnt want to do all the research. But i also knew that nobody would believe the story. No one would believe this if i wrote it as a novel. Its like bernie madoff. If you wrote that as a novel, no ones going the believe it. You couldnt sell three copies. Its too good. Thats what often happens with the stories that are just too rich. You really, you cant use them, you cant steal them as a novelist. You can do the nonfiction route, and thats what i chose with the innocent man. Host is so you go from reading the obit to what . How did it become this book . Guest you know, i had no idea what i was getting into when i started. Although i loved the story from day one, i still love the story, as ive gotten into the world of Wrongful Convictions, i realize that this, you know, theres a lot of exonerations, 235 now from the Innocence Project in new york and around the country. Thats 235 fantastic stories just from a human drama and tragedy perspective. How can our system, this system that we all believe in especially as lawyers, especially as a former criminal lawyer who never dealt with a Wrongful Conviction, if you believe in the system, if you think this is the best system in the world, how can you explain 235 exonerations . And thats the tip of the iceberg. How can you explain the fact weve sent 130 men to death row to be executed only to see them walk away because they werent guilty or didnt get a fair trial . Thats a terrible system. Its got some terrible problems that have to be fixed. And once i got into it, once i got into the story, i realized what, what the message could be just by telling the story of this man who was almost killed, was almost a victim of this very flawed Death Penalty system we have. And the stories could go on. I could write a novel i could write a book about every exoneration. And there are a lot of books about exonorees now. A lot of these guys are writing their stories. And theyre all fascinating. They have all the elements that make a great novel. Especially a lot of, you know, tragedy and heartbreak. Its good stuff when youre writing books. Host so you read the obit, do you travel immediately to ada, oklahoma . Do you start to research the case . What do you do . Guest well, the first thing i do was ron left two sisters, annette and renee close to dallas. I called both of the ladies and convinced them that i was serious host what did they say guest well, they thought i was joking. Host did they know who you were . Guest oh, yeah, yeah. They wereers. Another story, ron became a huge reader on death row. Well talk about that in a minute if you want to. But i never, i never heard em say he read my books on death row. He read he loved stephen king, he loved tom clancy, he loved John Steinbeck, and he read serious models. He read novels. He read are anything he could get. Thats a different story. I talked to the two sisters and i said, you know, this is what i want to do. I want exclusive rights to this story. There were no other people circling there were other people circling. Thered been movie producers, tv producers, thered been some rumors about books. Again, its such a good story. I wanted to go in fast, lock it up, i wanted exclusive rights to their story and access to all the stuff being family photographs, albums, baseball trophies. I eventually got everything. They loaned it to me, i gave it back. So i wanted the exclusive right to get all i could out of these people, and they said, fine. And so we, we struck a deal, and we all had coffee. Ing i took off to oklahoma. Met some great friends. Mark barrett, who was the attorney for Ron Williamson, still a great friend of mine, till working on some of the still working on some of the oklahoma cases, sort of took me around and introduced me to the judges and a lot of the players who were involved in the story. Theres tons of documents, trial transcripts. Ive got rons prison records, four boxes of rons daily notes that they took on him in prison, disciplinary reports, all the documents are just, they fill up a whole room. And thats how the book what the hell, i didnt know what to do with it. And i met the family of debbie carter, the victim, her mom. Her niece. They became friends, and we reached a level where we could trust each other. I talked to, i talked to most of the players. I didnt talk to all of them. I didnt really sit down with the cops who were involved in the investigation. Because i knew what they were going to say because theyd already said it under oath in trial. I mean, i had their, i e had their trial testimony under oath, i had their civil court depositions under oath. So i had em locked in. I had hundreds of pages of their, of what they already said under oath, so i didnt have to go chase them down. So anyway, it was a whole research and investigative process that host was it new to you . Guest it was all new. And i, you know, i really struggled with issues that i guess journalists faced every day. If you have a shaky source whos telling you a great story and will swear to it but you dont trust your source and you cant verify it elsewhere, what do you do. You dont use the story. As much as you want to. And i was continually confronted with issues like that. Again, questions that journalists deal with all the time. I felt like there was i knew the book would not be well received by the people i was writing about, the prosecutor, the police, maybe other folks in the system. So i wanted to be, i wanted to be accurate, extremely accurate when i talked about them. So that increased the level of research, the level of scrutiny that the book went through bid to haves and by editors and attorneys afterwards, to we were very careful. But it was a process that took 18 months which, for me, is a long time. I write a book i you a novel i write a novel in about six months. Which sounds fast but, i mean, you know, you start writing three or four or five pages a day over five, six months, youve got a lot of pages. Thats kind of the way i work. And the notion of having to just verify every sentence, have a source was pretty tedious. Not sure id do it again. Host why was it important for you to establish what ada, oklahoma, is like . And whats some of the characters, the true life characters look like . Why is that important . Guest i grew up in towns like ada. Small southern towns. Church on every corner, friendly people, Everybody Knows everybody. Ada, actually, is 15,000 people with a college. It was a little bit bigger than a lot of towns i grew up in, you know . But still i knew, knew the area, i felt like. Id never been to ada before, but thats sort of the way i grew up. Every summer night, half the towns at the Little League ballpark and you listen to it on the radio, and thats just the way i grew up. Its the way i practiced law for ten years. Very much a small town hustler looking for clients, looking for, you know, looking for way to get a big case. Thats the way i was when i was a lawyer. Thats the way i think it is for most lawyers in ada. So i felt very much at home in that environment. Im not a big city guy, obviously, thats not where i want to stay, where i want to be. So i understood it, and i understood the work ethic, the christian influence, sort of the harshness of many of the religions or the denominations. Ron was pentacostal, im not. But i understood, you know, how he was raised. Host why is that important to the reader . Guest well, you have to put your reader in that place. Youve got to. Youve got to take your reader away to some other place he or shes never been before. And to me, thats good storytelling. Smalltown america, especially in this part of the world oklahoma, arkansas, mississippi where i grew up they love the Death Penalty. And they wanted used it more often. They wanted used, those people are frustrated, the majority of people in the south, southwest, midwest, smalltown america, they want the Death Penalty used more often and frustrated by the fact that these guys a stay on death row for ten, 15 years as the appeals drag on and theyre frustrated want more people executed. We are here in virginia. Virginia links behind only texas in the number of people executed so this is an execution state. This is a death happy state. Lets use it more often for thats the way the majority of the people think around here. So i wanted i was trying to describe that environment and those people. Its always been a paradox to me of people who are so stridently moralistic and christian can so passionately use the Death Penalty. I will never understand that. That is not what christ taught. But anyway. Wanted to bring that into the book to try to expand to the reader how these verdicts happen and people have such respect for the authorities. When you have policeman testifying, jurors believe it. When you have experts who are a part of the crime lab, and testify and match up hair and fingerprints and all that blood, jurors believe that, even those guys were wrong hair analysis is junk science and its been proven many times. And there are hundreds of people right now in prison because of hair analysis. It junk science. Hair analysts from the state crime lab and testifying with a great deal of certainty in virtually every state in this country for a long time. Anyway, i want to show how trials happen. People say how do these, how do these convictions happen, Wrongful Convictions . As a country and as a society restarting to question things after 230 high profile exonerations and these guys walked out of prison after 20 years and they were innocent. Weve got to question something the police . Prosecutors . Experts . Junk science . All those things that go into a package of Wrongful Conviction how do these things happen . How to get a Wrongful Conviction . Its in the innocent man. That case is a checklist of everything except for wrongful id identification. Wrongful eyewitness id and that is not in the case but all the other facts they go to a Wrongful Conviction are in the innocent man. I wanted to bring that altogether and just walk the reader through. I did not create any of the stuff. I had to find it and arrange it in a readable fashion. Of put in a good dose of storytelling and striving for accuracy, i can defend anything in there. But, you know, i wanted to look to shock people. I wanted the book to infuriate readers and its done a good job of that. [laughter] host were there, not to give away everything in the innocent man but were lies told on the stand . Guest repeatedly. They used a bunch of snitches, the old jailhouse snitch routine which is, which is another rich source for Wrongful Convictions. There were several snitches who were prisoners themselves who the cops would drag out, offer a deal and in return for testimony and i heard him confess. He confessed to me but he told me all about this kind of stuff. Typical snitch testimony which is almost always bogus. When they arrested ron, when they finally got the warrant for his arrest they had a bogus fingerprint analysis, okay . It wasnt shaky but using that that was enough to get them the arrest warrant could once they got ron in jail that is when they build their case against him in jail. He supposedly said something to one of the Prison Guards and that got testified that he supposedly confessed to another and that got testify. Thats how they build their case against ron in a trial. These people testified or he told me this. He said and all in jail, he said this or whatever. That is how the line happened. A lot of lies. Host where is dennis britts today . Guest dennis fritz lives in kansas city and he is about to celebrate ten years of freedom. On april 15, which is a few weeks away, and dennis is one of the lucky guys, most of these exonerates, once they get over the euphoria of walking out of prison, thats why they are always smiling when they walk out after 20, 15, ten years. But reality sets in. Most of them are released without a dime, without a support network, without any kind of plan, society wants them to go away and shut up. There is never an apology, nobody has the guts to say they were wrong so these guys are cast out and left odd and they have a very difficult time honestly. Dennis went through a period of time difficulty when he went out and he and ron had some very good lawyers, there two men from new york but also mark barrett and other local lawyers in oklahoma put together this really strong civil case and went back and sued the cops, sued the prosecutor, sued the state crime lab. Ron sued the prison system and they filed a lawsuit about a year after they were out and they went through an extensive period of discovery and eventually was settled. The terms were undisclosed and l court order so i never tried but i do know the eta newspaper reported they got 5 million but i dont know if thats accurate. Anyway, dennis and ron got money. Dennis was smart with his and he invested it wisely and got some professional help and is put his life back together and he is, dennis spends a lot of time working with the Innocence Projects, speaking on the country. When youve been on trial for murder and he came within one vote of getting the Death Penalty, his vote was 11one to give dennis death. So because of that he did not go to death row but went to the general population and survived for 11 years but, you know, you go through that and you can give some speeches but people like to listen to. Its fascinating material. Host he had quite a back story also, his wife murdered on Christmas Day prior to this. Guest unbelievable story. Several years before this. His wife was shot in the head by some crazy kid next door and when dennis was working, he worked at the railroad it was out of town that day and his daughter who is in the with her mom when she died in he, you know, he survived that and he could not work for a while trying to raise his daughter and just a terrible story. Picked himself up, dennis finish college was a Junior High School science teacher, had a decent job and he was not from ada. Dennis was from kansas city but he found his way to oklahoma and he was trying to put his life back together. Dennis was arrested or dennis was suspected because the cops and their brilliance, right off the bat, murder scene was so grisly they said well, two people had to do this and i had to be a twoman job. There was no proof whatsoever but it was just a hunch and that is what thats how a lot of Wrongful Convictions of start these cops get a hunch. They know it offered they been around. They got the experience and they get a hunch for something. This guy, whether two, three or whatever but then they put blinders on and they get locked into this tunnel vision where they arrived and they will prove they are right. Well, the cops in this case, right off the bat, so violent the crime scene it had to be a twoman job did they pursued this theory with no proof and once they locked in on Ron Williamson they realize that ron did not have any friends in town or very few friends and the only person he was hanging around with during this period of time was dennis fritz. That was their theory, that was their link and that is how dennis got sucked into all of this. Then when dennis got in jail, he was arrested but they put dennis in jail and suddenly there were snitches these snitches heard dennis confess or say this and they found all these snitches and put them on the witness stand under oath and these people told the jury and thats how dennis got convicted. No physical proof could i mean, no viable proof. They had a crime lab expert who matched some of dennis hair and some of rons hair to some scalp hair and pubic hair find at the crown crime scene and was a match. Totally disproven later by dna but anyway, thats how they got dennis convicted. Host we will leave the conclusion to people who want to read the book. Mr. Gresham, he said he would not want to do this again. Take on a nonfiction project like this. Is that definitive . Guest no. No. It could happen tomorrow probably yeah, ive got the next two books sort of planned. Host novels . Guest on finishing a collection of stuart stories. The first time ive never well, some of these stories i have been playing around with for 15 years and they are finally getting ramped up. It will be a short story collection published probably in october, by doubleday, and that is the next project and but the next legal thriller is already kind of taking shape. You know, if i saw a great idea in the newspaper or obituary section tomorrow then i probably would file it away and might pursue it but i would be hesitant to jump into it right now. Rons obituary was just the timing was when i sought, the timing was really good because it was december and i was not doing anything for it i just finished a book and i wasnt looking for a story and there it was and it all fell into place. Im not sure it would happen that way again but if i saw a story that i fell in love with, i know what i would do. I would go write it. Host your most recent novel, 2009, the associate i john grisham, where do you get the ideas . Guest that was book number 22. I can go back to almost every book and show you something in reality that happened, whether it happened to me as a lawyer, my career was not that exciting and only lasted ten years but generally something i have seen, someone i have known, a case i was familiar with 20 years ago, whatever, almost every case goes back to a reality. I will take a fact situation, take what really happened and fictionalize it, sensationalize it, whatever and try to piece together a story that starts with a opening that is compelling. You got to hook your audience pretty quick. You go to movie and nothing happens in the first ten minutes probably going to youre probably in trouble and the movie is probably in trouble. Its pretty good rule of thumb. And so i spent a lot of time what is a great opening scene here and how can you get the reader invested in page one. Thats often the easy parts. There are a lot of great complex scenes, dead body, smoking gun whatever and then you say well, how will it end and hopefully the ending is something that the reader is not expecting and then how do you sustain the narrative tension for 300 pages. How do you keep it going . I kick that around four a lot of ideas mentally and then when i could see the whole book or i see the whole story i will start the process of actually laying it out on paper, an outline, chapter one what happens, chapter two what happens, how does it end in chapter 40, 500 pages later, through the pages later, whatever so thats a pretty tedious process but sometimes the outlines take longer than the actual writing of the novel but more time i spend on the outline the easier the novel is. When i cheat on the outline i get in trouble with the book and ive learned that i still screw up and get lazy. Thats a longwinded answer to say the ideas come from almost always from real life but having said that, i dont know i cant give you a specific example of where the idea for the associate came from. What happened over the years is often people will say i enjoyed your books but i really loved your early stuff. That at first bother me, like my books now dont live up to what i but i realized we all do that. Whether its music or movies or almost anything in popular culture, once we discover someone and watch their career you tend to say i like his early stuff, i like her early movies or whatever but its what we do. But ive also asked myself over the years have i changed the writing style . Its not been intentional so the associate was a deliberate effort to go back and recapture the suspense of the firm, the pelican brief, the client and those three books came out in 91, 92 and 93. The movies, all three movies, came out within a 12 month span and all three movies were huge with big casts and all three movies were on tv somewhere tonight 15 years later. Looking back with a bit of hindsight those three were huge. They pave the way for everything else. And so with the associate i said i will go back and see if i can recapture the thrill, the suspense, all that stuff that went into those three books and thats why i wrote the associate. Theres no social issue, theres no soapbox, i have to watch the preaching as my wife says, its oldfashioned suspense. Host where you write . You mentioned you write five, six pages a day. Where you write . Guest right now were sitting in darn downtown charlottesville off of downtown mall and we live about 15 miles from here, way out in the country, very remote area in the county. About 20 minute drive and its a very quiet and i have an Office Behind the house, separate building with no phones, no faxes, nothing on the internet. Im not wired at all out there. I would never write a book online subject to being hacked into because of fear. The computer that i wrote the associate on i bought in 1993 and it has not written, i guess, 18 books and its about to collapse so i have, im now in the process of buying a new one and im terrified about doing this. Its a very quiet room with no distractions. Host 1993, old computer. Guest yeah, very old computer. Host what terrifies you about buying a new one . Guest i have an apple laptop by keeping the house house for the emails and online and but if you dont email, i have two kids in their 20s so they brought me a blackberry for christmas and tommy had attacked so i hightech these days. [laughter] im sort of resistant to that stuff and i keep thomas off you got to grow up and we have these issues with the kindle ebooks where we are still plowing through these issues about how we will sell books in the future and im the last night we were ever want to try something new but what is terrifying is look, 16 yearold machine that i said down this morning at 8 00 oclock and did all my normal daily routines on the computer, checked in here and there and added stuff and then did about three pages this morning in a short story. Host [inaudible] guest all go back tomorrow and reread write about today and always fiddle and edit and tinker with and thats a constant process. Host no one gets to see those first versions with the computer . Guest no one ever sees the very first draft, no. They are never printed. The first thing i print is a true first draft with china mistakes and stuff i did not catch. Host do you keep those . Guest yes, my wife read those. She goes through it was a pretty good at it, she doesnt really, she reads for content story plot, characters, is a story working. She always knows what the story is by the time i write the book and she knows what i will be writing about. She doesnt know the ending and i just want to see how she reacts to it. But shes good about reading the first draft and this character is really not working or i really dont like this part of the book. Thats the type of editing she does. She has a red pen and loves to use it. I will get the first draft back from her, go through it again, clean it up and the net draft goes to my agent in new york eventually and he works off that bid that we go back and forth, back and forth and we never cut corners on editing. Its a lot of big offers. Once they reach a point they say okay, turn in the book and dont touch it. Im done with it. That is a mistake and id be afraid to do that. My agent was my editor at doubleday for the first time but of course david bought the firm in 1990 and has edited every book, edited 21 books now and so we have off to a close relationship and as far as david is concerned and the editors at doubleday and the copy editors theater has always been this sort of transparency in it they know they can say anything. Nothing is off limits. If you question anything, you can question a subplot, you can question the character, a word or if something doesnt sound right its on the table. Thats extra work for me but in the long run and its not a lot of that. But in the long run i think it makes for a better book. The two processes i have described the outlining and the editing are, you know, by the bar most unpleasant part of writing a book. But they are also the most important. The most unpleasant part of writing a book is the author photo. I hate the author photo. Every year we go through this process of what will the photo be and i have actually published two, three books with no photo which is why i prefer to do it but doubleday always wants some kind of current photo. We dont cheat on the aging or the dating and they are all current photos. Host what do you think, are your kids thing, what is right think seen one of your books made into a movie, walking through an airport and senior books everywhere . Guest well, i hope we dont i hope we never take it for granted. The movies we have learned to live with them. The firm was the first movie that came out in the summer of 1993 and that is 16 years ago. There have been eight or nine other movies since then and almost all have been enjoyable. I have been lucky with hollywood. Ive only had one bad one. The chamber was a bad movie. But again, ive been lucky. And so we dont, i have never gotten all bent out of shape over the movies but to some writers are furious because they destroyed their works or whatever but they are just movies but dont change a word of the book. Theyre only at the local cinema for a month and they are gone and on tv forever. If somebody is interpretation of what you have written and if you dont want to do that, dont sell the film rights. Ive always taken the position that if you sell the film rights expected to be Something Different and dont complain about it. If you dont like that, dont take the money. As far as movies are concerned we had fun with them. You know, the kids will watch one on tv occasionally or portions of one and as far as seeing the book in the airports it is like its sort of like the movies sometimes somewhere im traveling and im not expecting to see my face on a poster and i will stop and laugh and i always go over and see what books people are buying and how much activity we got going on but its not, its probably the perfect amount of fame, if you value your privacy its not like i get stopped walking in the street. Host do you get recognized . Guest i get recognized in certain places. Obviously where i live here but im from mississippi and when im in the memphis area, yeah but again people rarely intrude. Ive never had a problem in public. Ive never felt threatened. Its made me appreciate people who are truly famous and cannot live a normal life. Thats what truly famous people deal with. They cant be normal. My life is very normal and i keep it dull and quiet and thats the way i want to live. Host who are your favorite writers . Guest contemporary i would say the british espionage guy, on lecrae still my hero. I love the books but ive got m. I love his books but he publishes them once every ten years so its hard to get excited. Steven king is a pretty good buddy. We send books back and forth and always are emailing and carrying on some delicious and i am always glad to get one of stephens books. I cant say that i was finished on but he does not always finish mine. I read a lawyer, hes a great buddy, scott. I watched i want the other lawyers to see and have curiosity about what im writing about. But classical authors or dead authors, probably John Steinbeck is my favorite. I grew up reading John Steinbeck. Still read a lot of it, awful lot of it. I will take last year i went on a mark twain binge. I read some of his short stories ive never seen before and i read a great biography of mark twain by ron powers and does really well done. So, i get off on Something Like that go a whole year. I started flying about seven, eight years ago learning how to fly so i read all these books about aviation, charles lindbergh, i will chase stuff like that. A few years ago i went on a kick about world war ii and just read a bunch of books and its all over the place but its not always fiction. Its probably half fiction, half nonfiction. Host no William Faulkner . Guest grew up in mississippi and there has got to be a state law down near the law requires all kids to read faulkner or requires all High School English teachers to teach faulkner. And, you know, some of its, its not always accessible. I had a great High School English teacher. She made us read faulkner. But she also allowed us to read a steinbeck so we had faulkner in one hand, steinbeck and the other in we all prefer to steinbeck. Sure, i appreciate the genius of faulkner and appreciate his life and commitment to his work but im not going to tell you i read faulkner for pleasure. Occasionally i will read a faulkner book to see if i missed something in the past but you got to have commitment. Host john grisham, most recent book, the associate is a novel and has written want nonfiction, 2006, innocent man and coming out with the collection of short stories. Thank you for being on book tv. Guest my pleasure. Enjoyed it. You are watching book tv and we are taking a couple of hours to show you some programs with bestselling author, john grisham and he has appeared on the tv ten times. Up next from 2011 he accepts the harper lee prize for legal fiction for his novel, the confession. Its followed by discussion on the roles that law plays in contemporary fiction. Everyone got quiet so i guess we can begin paid thats my cue. That afternoon. As dean is the university of Alabama Law School im very pleased today to welcome all of you to the inaugural celebration and presentation of the harper lee prize for legal fiction. Now harper lee of monroe bill, alabama attended our law school in the 1940s and published to kill a mockingbird in 1960. The book illuminated the responsibility of lawyers to fight injustice and empower them to represent the wrongly accused
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