Ron Williamson

Ron Williamson (February 3, 1953, Oklahoma—December 4, 2004) was a minor league baseball catcher/pitcher who was wrongly convicted and sentenced to death in 1988 in Oklahoma for rape and murder.

Williamson was the 41st pick in baseball's 1971 amateur draft, a second-round selection by the Oakland Athletics. He spent the 1972 season primarily with the Coos Bay-North Bend A's, hitting .265 in 52 games. In 1973, he had a poor year, hitting .137 for the Key West Conchs with only 13 runs produced in 59 games. A shoulder injury derailed his career for the next few years. His father, through a childhood friendship with Harry 'the cat' Breechen, got him a look with the New York Yankees, where he pitched for parts of 1976 & 1977. In his last season, he pitched in 14 games, working 33 innings. At the age of 24 his baseball career was over.

Ron Williamson Mug Shot

Williamson's life went into a tailspin after that. He became a drug and alcohol addict and suffered from mental illness, becoming depressed and living with his mother. In 1982, Debra Sue Carter, a waitress in an Ada, Oklahoma bar he frequented, was found dead. Williamson along with Dennis Fritz was cited as a suspect by the police five years later on flimsy testimony but was found guilty and sentenced to death in 1988 while Fritz was given a life sentence.

After 11 years on death row, Williamson was cleared by DNA testing, and was finally freed. He died in a nursing home of cirrhosis of the liver five years after being freed. Best-selling novelist John Grisham read his obituary in The New York Times and made him the subject of his first non-fiction book, The Innocent Man, published in 2006. The book became a bestseller.

References

• The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town by John Grisham, Doubleday Books, 2006, ISBN 0385517238.

External links

• Ron Williamson - from PBS Frontline
• Baseball-Reference.com Bullpen article