The Innocent Man
The back cover covers it well:
If you believe that in America you are innocent until proven guilty, this book will shock you. If you believe in the death penalty, this book will disturb you. If you believe the criminal justice system is fair, this book will infuriate you
Graham breaks from his traditional novel format, and dives into non-fiction in a big way. He tells a story that clearly affected him personally. The story still is rich with legal details and drama, but spends more time in jail than anywhere else. The picture you are left with is hardly one of country-club prisons - especially when viewed from the perspectives of several men who were jailed for crimes they did not commit, yet were subjected to abuse, taunting, malnutrition, poor medical care, and inattention. In the end, it's really a story that demonstrates that despite well-intentioned protocols, layers of oversight, and lengthy procedures, success or failure, even in life-critical situations, often comes down to people, and whether the people you cross paths with are capable of assessing and discerning truth, administering justice and accountability fairly, and care about others more than themselves.
In his wrap-up, Graham says:
I could have 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 Ohlahoma, 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.
One comes away from the book touched by those that made a difference in a positive way, saddened by the disjustices and ignorance of of the communities, and realizing that no system is ever perfect.
