Thursday, July 12, 2007

Innocent Ones Arrested?

I shall ask you one prominent question about American Police. I meant, your idea about Indian rural police and American rural police. Whom do you think better of the two? Ok, you will have a better answer after reading this.

Recently I was reading "The Innocent Man", by John Grisham. It was not as I expected it to be. Though, a thriller, its pace was slow. I skipped half the book and went to the last sections which was, to my surprise, authors note. I followed his note and came to know that the book was a real story. After reading it, my opinion of American Police changed!

On december 1982, there was a rape followed by murder in Ada, a small town in US. The girl was Debbie Carter who happened to had no rivals at all. The police could not find the real killer and arrested and charged a man named Ron Williamson only because a guy named Glen Gore told the police that he was there with her on the night in the club Coachlight, even though there were witnesses who saw Gore dropped by near her apartment late in the evening, on the same date. Dennis Fritz was also charged only because he used to go to bars with Ron. The police had blood and hair as evidence and they didn't match with either Ron or Fritz.

A year and a half later, a woman named Denise Haraway disappeared mysteriously. A boy named Tommy Ward was arrested considering Haraway was murdered and disposed by him only because someone described two boys with a young lady and one of the boys description matched Tommy Ward's. The point was the description which caused to arrest Tommy Ward was matching almost half the boys in the town. And after questioning him continuously for eight and a half hours, that was unrecorded, he was exhausted answering to questions he never knew. Finally he confessed saying he dreamt of something like murder only so that he could tell the truth in the court and to get relaxed for the moment. He could never relax in his life!

Karl Fontenot arrested only since he was Tommy's friend and he too was made to confess. Even though their confessions conflicted on the way Haraway was murdered, the police claim they were the killers and the police don't have any clue or evidence!

Tommy Ward and Karl Fontenot are still serving behind the bars. Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz were released in 1999 as they were proved to be innocent by DNA test.

Indian police, in my opinion, may not be able to find the killers quickly but they would not file charges on innocent ones. Answer to above question now.

Statement of John Grisham
"It is an intriguing and horrifying story: the story of the dream that got Tommy Ward and Karl Fontenot convicted. Karl and Tommy deserve attention and help. I encourage anyone with any information about this case to send it to their attorney. It is important to learn from this nightmare. It is also important that this nightmare somehow be unraveled."

For more details, please read "The innocent man - By John Grisham" and visit http://www.wardandfontenot.com/. Even if you google it, now you will get numerous sites about the tales.