John Grisham - The Innocent Man

The final witness was by far the most damaging. A divorced woman named Andrea Hardcastle told a harrowing tale of an ordeal that lasted over four hours. In 1981, Ron and a friend were at her house, trying to coax her into going out with them. They were headed for the Coachlight. Andrea was keeping three children of her own and two others, so she could not go out.

The men left, but Ron soon returned to retrieve a pack of cigarettes. He entered the house uninvited and quickly made a pass at Andrea. It was after ten at night, the children were asleep, and she was frightened. She had no interest in sex. He exploded, striking her repeatedly about the face and head and demanding that she perform oral sex. She refused and, in doing so, realized that the more she talked, the less he hit her.

So they talked. He talked about his baseball career, his failed marriage, his guitar playing, God and religion, his mother. He had gone to high school with her ex-husband, who was a part-time bouncer at the Coachlight. At times he was quiet, peaceful, even tearful, at other times he was erratic, loud, and angry. Andrea worried about the children, all five of them. As he talked, she kept thinking of some way out of the ordeal. He erupted into violent fits, hitting her again and trying to pull off her clothes. He was too drunk to maintain an erection.

At one point, Ron allegedly said that he figured he would have to kill her. Andrea was praying fervently. She decided to play along. She invited him back the next afternoon, when the kids would be gone, and they could have all the sex they wanted. This proposal appealed to him greatly, so he left.

She called her ex-husband and her father, and together they patrolled the streets looking for Ron. They were heavily armed and not shy about roadside justice.

Andrea's face was a mess-cuts, bruises, swollen eyes. Ron wore a ring engraved with the head of a horse, and this caused numerous small puncture wounds around her eyes. The police were called the next day, but she adamantly refused to press charges. Ron lived close by, and she was terrified of him.

Barney was unprepared for her testimony and muddled through a halfhearted crossexamination. The courtroom was silent when she stepped down from the witness stand. The jurors glared at the defendant. It was hanging time.

Inexplicably, Barney called no witnesses to mitigate the damage and try to save Ron's life. Annette and Renee were sitting in the courtroom, ready to testify. Not one word had been uttered throughout the trial about Ron's mental incompetence. No records had been introduced.

The final words the jurors heard from the witness stand were those of Andrea Hardcastle. Bill Peterson begged for the death penalty in his closing argument. And he had some fresh evidence, a new fact or two that had not been proven during the trial. There had been no mention of Ron's horse head ring until Andrea Hardcastle's testimony. Peterson jumped to a few conclusions, expanded the evidence, and decided that Ron had used the same ring when he beat Debbie Carter; thus, her facial injuries most surely were similar to what Andrea Hardcastle's must have been back in January 1981. It was just a wild idea. There was certainly no proof, but then no proof was needed.

Peterson dramatically told the jury, "He left his signature with Andrea Hardcastle, and he underlined it with Debbie Carter." He ended his remarks by saying, "When you come back in here, ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to ask you to say: Ron Williamson, you deserve to die for what you did to Debra Sue Carter."

With perfect timing, Ron blurted, "I did not kill Debbie Carter." The jury retired but made quick work of the penalty deliberations. In less than two hours, they were back with a sentence of death.

In a bizarre case ofjudicial second-guessing, Judge Jones called a hearing the following day to ponder the state's Brady violation. Though Barney was exhausted and fed up with the case, he was still indignant that the cops and Peterson had deliberately withheld the 1983 videotape of Ron's polygraph interrogation.

But why bother at this point? The trial was over. The video was of no benefit after the fact.

To no one's surprise, Judge Jones ruled that the suppression of the tape by the authorities was not a Brady violation after all. The tape wasn't really hidden; it was handed over after the trial, sort of a delayed submission.

Ron Williamson was on his way to F Cellhouse, the notorious death row at the Oklahoma state prison in McAlester.

Oklahoma is very serious about its death penalty. When the U.S. Supreme Court approved the resumption of executions in 1976, the Oklahoma state legislature rushed into a special session for the sole purpose of enacting death penalty statutes. The following year, the lawmakers debated the innovative idea of death by lethal injection, as opposed to going back to Old Sparky, the state's dependable electric chair. The rationale was that chemicals were more merciful; thus, less likely to attract constitutional attacks of cruel and inhuman punishment; thus, more likely to speed along executions. In the excitement of the moment, with the press watching closely and the voters egging them on, the legislators debated the various ways in which to take human life. Some hardliners wanted hangings and firing squads and such, but in the end lethal injection was approved overwhelmingly, and Oklahoma became the first state to adopt it.

But not the first state to use it. Much to the frustration of lawmakers and police and prosecutors and a wide majority of the public, Oklahoma quickly fell behind the other active death penalty states. Thirteen long years passed without an execution. Finally, in 1990, the waiting ended, and the death chamber was used once again.

Once the dam broke, the flood came. Since 1990, Oklahoma has executed more convicts on a per capita basis than any other state. No place, not even Texas, comes close.

Executions in Oklahoma take place at McAlester, a maximum security prison a hundred and twenty miles southeast of Oklahoma City. Death row is there, in an infamous section called the H Unit.

Practice makes perfect, and executions at McAlester are carried out with precision. For the inmate whose time has come, the last day is spent receiving visitors-family members, friends, usually his lawyer. Of course the visits are painful, made even more so by the fact that there can be no physical contact. They chat and cry through a thick wall of glass while talking on a phone. No farewell hugs or kisses from the family, just a gutwrenching "I love you" through a black receiver. Often the inmate and his visitor will symbolically kiss each other by pressing their lips against the glass. They also imitate touching with their hands.

There is no law that prevents physical contact before an execution. Each state has its own rules, and Oklahoma prefers to keep the rituals as harsh as possible. If the warden is in a good mood, he allows the inmate to make some phone calls. When the visiting is over, it's time for the last meal, but there is a $15 limit on the menu, and the warden can veto anything on it. Cheeseburgers, fried chicken, catfish, and ice cream are the most popular items requested.

About an hour before his death, the inmate is prepped. He changes clothes and puts on a light blue outfit, much like surgical scrubs. He is secured to a gurney with wide Velcro straps, and as he begins his final ride, there is a pep rally of sorts thrown by his comrades. They shake and kick their cell doors. They rattle the metal bars. They yell and whoop and the racket continues until just after the scheduled moment of execution, then it stops suddenly.

As the inmate is being prepared, the death chamber is waiting and very well organized. Witnesses somberly file into the two viewing rooms- one for the family of the victim, one for the family of the killer. The room for the victims has twenty-four folding chairs, but some are reserved for the press, usually four or five seats, a couple for the lawyers, and a few for the warden and his staff. The local sheriff and prosecutor seldom miss the event.