The Innocent Man
- 416
- Pages
- about 8 h
- Reading time
- NYT bestseller · 3 weeks on the list, peaked at #9
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Our view
“The Innocent Man” lays out a wrongful conviction thoroughly and clearly, and it disturbs. Grisham’s first nonfiction book follows Ron Williamson, a one-time minor league ballplayer from Ada, Oklahoma, sentenced to death in 1988 for a murder he did not commit and cleared by DNA evidence eleven years later. The legal detail stays understandable to a lay reader, and the picture of the justice system that emerges is a dismaying one.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town is a 2006 true crime book by John Grisham, his first nonfiction title. The book tells the story of Ronald 'Ron' Keith Williamson of Ada, Oklahoma, a former minor league baseball player who was wrongly convicted in 1988 of the rape and murder of Debra Sue Carter in Ada and was sentenced to death. After serving 11 years on death row, he was exonerated by DNA evidence and other material introduced by the Innocence Project and was released in 1999.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.7 across 114 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 44% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Rankings average of 8.2. That is how 8.0 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 8.5 | 11 | 10% |
| Hardcover | 7.6 | 103 | 90% |
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
