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The Christchurch Civic
Creche Case |
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In his review of The Innocent Man,
by John Grisham (Dec 9), Willie Young concludes that the book is "a
scary illustration of how badly wrong the criminal process can go". I suggest two even better
illustrations, both closer to Appeal Court President Young: Appeal Court
judgements The Queen v Ellis 1994 and The Queen v Ellis 1999.
This is a true story of an
egregious and well-established miscarriage of justice which occurred in
small-town America. In 1988 Ron Williamson and Daniel
Fritz were found guilty of the 1982 murder of a young woman in Ada, Oklahoma.
Williamson was sentenced to death and Fritz to life imprisonment. Both were
innocent. The real killer was Glen Gore. He
was the primary prosecution witness against Williamson. Gore's false claim
that Williamson had been with the victim in a bar on the night of her murder
led the police to suspect that Williamson had been involved in her death. Williamson had been a high school
baseball star but had failed to make it in the professional game. By 1982 he
was affected by mental illness, a personality disorder and substance abuse.
He had a significant criminal record and had twice been acquitted of rape. So
he was a good suspect. But unfortunately for the police,
there was no real evidence against him. How the police came to supply the
missing evidence (and at the time sweep Fritz into the case involved a number
of the factors which so often combine to produce miscarriages of justice: a
slipshod police investigation, dodgy forensic evidence for the prosecution,
(with the defence not resourced to challenge it) prison informants (who in
this case attributed false confessions to both Williamson and Fritz). In the end, DNA evidence
exonerated both Williamson and Fritz and conclusively implicated Gore who
eventually was prosecuted and found guilty of the murder. Williamson's mental illness and
personality structure meant that he was not well equipped for adult life
generally and extremely badly equipped for the stresses of prison. The 11
years he spent on Death Row before his exoneration were harrowing and provide
a secondary focus for the book. A third theme is what Grisham
plainly sees as the hit-and-miss nature of the American justice system. Those who enjoy Grisham's works of
fiction may tire of the mass of detail and the slow unwinding of the
narrative. But this is an interesting story and is well told. Anyone with an interest in the way
serious crime is investigated and prosecuted will find this book fascinating,
a vivid demonstration of bad practice and a scary illustration of how badly
wrong the criminal process can go. |
