The prisoner

This article is about the book by John Grisham. For other meanings, see The Prisoner (disambiguation) .

Der Gefangene (Original title: The Innocent Man ) is the first non-fiction book by John Grisham . It was published by Doubleday Publishing in October 2006 and was also published by Heyne Verlag in the same month for German-speaking countries . The book tells the story of Ronald Keith Williamson , who fell victim to a miscarriage of justice and waited on death row for 11 years to be executed .

content

Ronald Keith Williamson (called Ron) becomes a professional athlete in the baseball minor leagues after high school. However, it does not come close to the level of established players and is used less and less. Ron cannot cope with this decline and the social decline, combined with increasing psychological problems, begins. Eventually he is arrested for a murder and then spent more than twelve years in prison. In an incomprehensible legal scandal , the mentally ill man is convicted of the murder of Debbie Carter and is put on death row . Dennis Fritz is also affected, also wrongly convicted. The two innocents are not abandoned by family and friends, but initially they have little chance against the public prosecutor and police, who work with falsified evidence and dubious witnesses. The date for Ron Williamson's execution is already set when some people who have doubts about his perpetration can obtain a postponement.

The conditions for the death row inmates in MacAlester prison are so dire that even Amnesty International is investigating them: Death row is underground so prisoners cannot get daylight, the food is poor and so little that many prisoners are dangerously heavy to lose.

After several years the trial of Ron Williamson is resumed and after more than eleven years in captivity, Ron Williamson is released. But the time in prison left its mark on him. He is seriously deranged and relapses again and again after treatment. He had a long medical history and eventually died at the age of 51 from cirrhosis of the liver , which was probably caused by years of taking psychotropic drugs.

filming

In December 2018, Netflix released a six-episode documentary series of the same name .

literature

• John Grisham: Der Gefangene , Heyne, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-453-26531-9
• John Grisham: Der Gefangene , audio book in abridged version (6 CDs, read by Charles Brauer), Random House Audio, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-86604-296-5

Web links

• My Concern For Tommy Ward and Karl Fontenot - Innocent Men Still Locked Up on dlbailes.com
• Homepage of the Innocence Project , which helped Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz with their revision and supports those wrongly convicted.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The prisoner on netflix.com