"Meticulously researched.., a compelling narrative."

--Entertainment Weekly

"John Grisham’s latest book has the usual touches fans have come to expect from the master of the legal thriller: suspense, shock, even a wrongful conviction and near execution. But this time, the tale is true."

--Colleen Long, Associated Press

In the town of Ada, Oklahoma, Ron Williamson was going to be the next Mickey Mantle. But on his way to the Big Leagues, Ron stumbled, his dreams broken by drinking, drugs, and women. Then, on a winter night in 1982, not far from Ron’s home, a young cocktail waitress named Debra Sue Carter was savagely murdered. The investigation led nowhere. Until, on the flimsiest evidence, it led to Ron Williamson. The washed-up small-town hero was charged, tried, and sentenced to death--in a trial littered with lying witnesses and tainted evidence that would shatter a man’s already broken life...and let a true killer go free.

Impeccably researched, grippingly told, filled with eleventh- hour drama, John Grisham’s first work of nonfiction reads like a page-turning legal thriller. It is a book that will terrify anyone who believes in the presumption of innocence--a book no American can afford to miss.