BOOKS: The Dreams of Ada

“The Dreams of Ada” by Robert Mayer tells a sto­ry strik­ing­ly sim­i­lar to that recount­ed by John Grisham in ​“The Innocent Man.” Each book involves the mur­der of a young woman from Ada, Oklahoma in the ear­ly 1980s. In both cas­es, there are two defen­dants whose con­vic­tions rely on lit­tle pro­ba­tive evi­dence but involve ​“con­fes­sions” that emerged from a dream. Both pros­e­cu­tions were led by Bill Peterson and both involved the same jail-house infor­mant. The defen­dants in Mayer’s book, Tommy Ward and Karl Fontenot, were both sen­tenced to death, as was Ron Williamson in Grisham’s book. Williamson and his co-defen­dant were even­tu­al­ly freed when DNA evi­dence exclud­ed them from the crime scene. Ward and Fontenot remain in prison for life, after their death sen­tences were over­turned. In their case, there was no DNA evi­dence to pro­vide a more defin­i­tive answer. At the time of their tri­al, no body had even been dis­cov­ered. Both Mayer and Grisham believe that Ward and Fontenot were vic­tims of a com­plete mis­car­riage of justice. 

(R. Mayer, ​“The Dreams of Ada,” Doubleday Broadway 1987, with new Afterword 2006). See Innocence and Arbitrariness.