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