The Innocent Man

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Strong Survivor Wrongly Convicted in 1988 Exonerated April 15, 1999

Two days after Ron Williamson was buried, I was flipping through The New York Times when I saw his obituary. The headline-"Ronald Williamson, Freed from Death Row, Dies at 51"-was compelling enough, but the lengthy obituary, written by Jim Dwyer, had the clear makings of a much longer story. There was a striking photo of Ron standing in the courtroom the day he was exonerated, looking a bit perplexed and relieved and perhaps even a little smug.

Somehow I had missed the story of his release in 1999, and I had never heard of Ron Williamson or Dennis Fritz.

I read it a second time. Not in my most creative moment could I conjure up a story as rich and as layered as Ron's. And, as I would soon learn, the obituary barely scratched the surface. Within a few hours, I had talked to his sisters, Annette and Renee, and suddenly I had a book on my hands.

Writing nonfiction has seldom crossed my mind-I've had far too much fun with the novels-and I had no idea what I was getting into.

The story, and the research and writing of it, consumed the next eighteen months. It took me to Ada many times, to the courthouse and jail and coffee shops around town, to both the old death row and the new one at McAlester, to Asher, where I sat in the bleachers for two hours and talked baseball with Murl Bowen, to the offices of the Innocence Project in New York, to a cafe in Seminole where I had lunch with Judge Frank Seay, to Yankee Stadium, to the prison in Lexington where I spent time with Tommy Ward, and to Norman, my base, where I hung out with Mark Barrett and talked about the story for hours. I met Dennis Fritz in Kansas City, Annette and Renee in Tulsa, and when I could convince Greg Wilhoit to come home from California, we toured Big Mac, where he saw his old cell for the first time since he left it fifteen years earlier.

With every visit and every conversation, the story took a different twist. I could've written five thousand pages.

The journey also exposed me to the world of wrongful convictions, something that I, even as a former lawyer, had never spent much time thinking about. This is not a problem peculiar to Oklahoma, far from it. Wrongful convictions occur every month in every state in this country, and the reasons are all varied and all the same-bad police work, junk science, faulty eyewitness identifications, bad defense lawyers, lazy prosecutors, arrogant prosecutors.

In the cities, the workloads of criminologists are staggering and often give rise to less than professional procedures and conduct. And in the small towns the police are often untrained and unchecked. Murders and rapes are still shocking events and people want justice, and quickly. They, citizens and jurors, trust their authorities to behave properly. When they don't, the result is Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz.

And Tommy Ward and Karl Fontenot. Both are now serving life terms. Tommy might one day be eligible for parole, but, through a procedural quirk, Karl will never be. They cannot be saved by DNA because there is no biological evidence. The killer or killers of Denice Haraway will never be found, not by the police anyway. For more on their story, go to www.wardandfontenot.com.

While researching this book, I came across two other matters, both relevant to Ada. In 1983, a man named Calvin Lee Scott was put on trial for rape in the Pontotoc County Courthouse. The victim was a young widow who was attacked in her bed as she slept, and because the rapist kept a pillow over her face, she could not identify him. A hair expert from the OSBI testified that two crime scene pubic hairs were "microscopically consistent" with samples taken from Calvin Lee Scott, who vehemently denied any guilt. The jury felt otherwise, and he was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison. He served twenty and was released. He was out ofjail when DNA testing exonerated him in 2003. The case was investigated by Dennis Smith. Bill Peterson was the district attorney. Also in 2001, Ada 's former assistant chief of police Dennis Corvin pleaded guilty to federal charges of manufacturing and distributing methamphetamine and was sent away for six years. Corvin, as you might recall, was the Ada policeman mentioned by Glen Gore in his affidavit signed some twenty years after their alleged drug-dealing ventures.

Ada is a nice town, and the obvious question is: When will the good guys clean house? Perhaps when they get tired of paying for bad prosecutions. Twice in the past two years, the city of Ada has raised property taxes to replenish the reserve funds used to settle the lawsuits filed by Ron and Dennis. In a cruel insult, these taxes are paid by all property owners, including many members of Debbie Carter's family.

It is impossible to calculate the total amount of money wasted. Oklahoma spends about $20,000 a year to house an inmate. Ignoring the extra cost of death row and treatment in state mental hospitals, Ron's tab was at least $250,000. Same for Dennis. Add the amounts they received in the civil suit, and the math becomes easy. It's safe to say that several million dollars were wasted because of their cases.

These sums do not begin to contemplate the thousands of hours spent by the appellate lawyers who worked so diligently to free the men, nor do they include the time wasted by the state's lawyers trying to execute them. Every dollar spent prosecuting and defending them was mailed in by the taxpayers.

But there were some savings. Barney Ward was paid a whopping $3,600 to defend Ron, and, as you remember, Judge Jones denied Barney's request for money to hire a forensic expert to evaluate the state's evidence. Greg Saunders received the same fee, $3,600. He, too, was denied access to an expert. The taxpayers had to be protected.

The financial waste was frustrating enough, but the human toll was far more damaging. Obviously, Ron's mental problems were greatly exacerbated by the wrongful conviction, and, once freed, he never recovered. Most exonerees do not. Dennis Fritz is a lucky one. He had the courage and the intelligence and, eventually, the money to put his life back together. He lives a quiet, normal, and prosperous life in Kansas City, and last year became a grandfather.

Of the other characters, Bill Peterson is still the district attorney in Ada. Two of his assistants are Nancy Shew and Chris Ross. One of his investigators is Gary Rogers. Dennis Smith retired from the Ada Police Department in 1987 and died suddenly on June 30, 2006. Barney Ward died in the summer of 2005 as I was writing the book, and I never had the chance to interview him. Judge Ron Jones was voted out of office in 1990 and left the Ada area.

Glen Gore is still housed on H Unit at McAlester. In July 2005, his conviction was overturned by the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, and a new trial was ordered. The court decided that Gore did not receive a fair trial because Judge Landrith did not allow his defense lawyer to put on proof that two other men had already been convicted of the murder.

On June 21, 2006, Gore was again found guilty. The jury deadlocked on the issue of death, and Judge Landrith, as required by law, sentenced Gore to life without parole.

I owe much to many people who helped with this book. Annette and Renee and their families gave me complete access to every aspect of Ron's life. Mark Barrett spent countless hours driving me around Oklahoma, telling me stories that I at first found hard to believe, and locating witnesses, pulling out old files, and leaning on his network of contacts. His assistant, Melissa Harris, copied a million documents and kept everything in meticulous order.

Dennis Fritz revisited his painful history with remarkable enthusiasm and answered all my questions. Greg Wilhoit did the same.

Brenda Tollett with the Ada Evening News dug through the archives and magically produced copies of the paper's extensive history of the two murders. Ann Kelley Weaver, now with The Oklahoman, was quick to recall many of the stories surrounding the exoneration.

At first, Judge Frank Seay was reluctant to talk about one of his cases. He still holds to the old-fashioned notion that judges should be heard and not seen, but he eventually came around. In one of our phone conversations I suggested that he was a "hero," a description he quickly objected to. I was overruled from twelve hundred miles away. Vicky Hildebrand still works for him and vividly remembers her first reading of Ron's petition for habeas corpus relief.

Jim Payne is now a federal judge himself and, though cooperative, showed little interest in taking credit for saving Ron's life. But he is a hero. His careful reading of Janet Chesley's brief, at home, after hours, prompted concern enough to approach Judge Seay and recommend an eleventh-hour stay of execution.

Though he entered the story in a late chapter, Judge Tom Landrith had the unique pleasure of presiding over the exoneration hearing in April 1999. Visiting his office in the Ada courthouse was always a treat. The stories, many of them probably true, flowed forth with great ease.

Barry Scheck and the warriors at the Innocence Project were gracious and open. As of this writing, they have freed 180 prisoners by DNA testing, and they have inspired at least thirty other innocence projects around the country. For a closer look, go to www.innocenceproject.org.

Tommy Ward spent three years and nine months on death row, on the old F Cellhouse, before being permanently exiled to the prison in Lexington. We swapped many letters. Some of his stories were about Ron, and he allowed me to use them in these pages. Regarding his nightmare, I relied heavily on The Dreams of Ada, by Robert Mayer. It's a fascinating book, a wonderful reminder of how good true-crime writing can be. Mr. Mayer was thoroughly cooperative during my research.

Thanks to the lawyers and staff at the Oklahoma Indigent Defense System-Janet Chesley, Bill Luker, and Kim Marks. And to Bruce Leba, Murl Bowen, Christy Shepherd, Leslie Delk, Dr. Keith Hume, Nancy Vollertsen, Dr. Susan Sharp, Michael Salem, Gail Seward, Lee Mann, David Morris, and Bert Colley. John Sherman, a third year law student at the University of Virginia, spent a year and a half buried in the boxes of research we collected, and somehow kept it all straight.

I had the benefit of volumes of sworn testimony from most of those involved in this story. Some interviews were not needed. Some were not granted. Only the names of the alleged rape victims have been changed.

John Grisham July 1, 2006