"Logic may indeed be unshakeable, but it cannot withstand a man who is determined to live. Where was the judge he had never seen? Where was the High Court he had never reached? He raised his hands and spread out all his fingers. But the hands of one of the men closed round his throat, just as the other drove the knife deep into his heart and turned it twice."-- Franz Kafka, The TrialWhen you first get into law school, people are always asking: "what kind of law do you want to do?" Just spitballing, I'd often tell people I wanted to be a public defender. The shock! I might as well have said I want to sodomize puppies. Cute puppies. The invariable response: "How can you defend a guilty person?" My response, honed over time and delivered smuggly is to say: "How do you know they're guilty? Can you look into their heart and see the evil there? Maybe we should just replace the jury system with you." Needless to say, I have a hard time making friends. The Dreams of Ada is Exhibit A for why there needs to be competent public defenders. In 1984, a young, just-married woman named Denice Haraway disappeared. Two young men, Karl Fontenot and Tommy Ward, were accused of her rape and murder, despite the fact her body had not been found. Karl and Tommy were not the brightest bulbs. They were brought into the police station and interrogated for hours and hours and hours. They never said the magic word (hint: it starts with "L" and ends with LAWYER). At the end of the ceasless badgering, both men copped to the crime, despite the fact that their stories were contradictory, implausible, and unsupported by physical evidence. The confession was extracted after one of the young, not-so-bright men told of a dream he had. As crazy as the "dream confession" sounds, it was also the basis of another conviction in Ada, that of Ron Williams, whose conviction and death sentence were later overturned (see the marvelous The Innocent Man for that story). The lesson: stay out of Oklahoma, specifically, Ada. This is a sad, tragic book. There are no winners, just a string of losers: a young, missing woman; two men with stunted futures convicted by an overzealous prosecutor, with incompetent defense counsel; the multiple families mourning the losses of their sons and daughter; and justice (as the saying goes: look for justice in heaven; here on earth, all we have is the law). The book is incredibly evocative of this time and place. There's a real feel for the town and its small-time dreamers. It's like Friday Night Lights filtered through Kafka and mixed with CSI, if every cast-member of CSI was a constitution-shredding boob. In the end, it's pretty clear Tommy and Karl are innocent. The story they told was ridiculous, and it kept changing. The cops kept searching the area they "confessed" they buried the body and found nothing. They said they burned her. They said they stabbed her. Years later, Denice's body was found by hunters. Single gunshot. No bone-scarring. No signs of burning. The confession was a dream, not just of Tommy and Kirk, but of the cops. Not a miscarriage of justice, but an abortion. Tommy and Kirk are rotting in prison to this day.
This book has one of the funniest all-time jokes in it: An unemployed guy in Iowa is drinking in a bar with his buddy, and he throws up on his shirt. He says, "Oh, no; my wife just bought me this shirt. She'll be furious." His buddy puts some money in his shirt pocket and says, "Tell her I threw up on it, and here's money to buy a new one."The man came home and his wife, as he predicted, was furious. He told her the story his buddy told him and said, "Joe said he was really sorry and gave me $20 to buy a new one." His wife pulled out the money, which turned out to be two twenties. "This is $40!" she said."Yeah, he pooped in my pants also," the husband said.
Do You like book The Dreams Of Ada (2006)?
I wanted to like this book. This is one of many true crime/cases that I have read and I have to say it just didn't stack up. I love Anne Rule and she does an amazing job with this genre - this author, not so much. If you have never read a book about the wrongfully convicted this book will open your eyes to this (more common than you think) occurrence. I read this book because of The Innocent Man which many others have mentioned here, but that book about the same town, different crime was SO MUCH better. This book was tedious to the point where I couldn't finish it. I struggled through to the half way point then skipped to the last few pages and I didn't miss anything.There are way more books about wrongful convictions that you would be better off reading. This book didn't really convince me that these two men were innocent, and obviously the judicial system didn't think so either since they are still, from what I can tell, behind bars.I am giving it 2 stars rather than 1 because the writing was OK, it just took too many twists and turns that were irrelevant, too many "characters" introduced for no purpose and it just wasn't very well put together. It didn't keep my interest although to people who have never read about wrongful convictions and trials of this nature it might have been more interesting. It just didn't do it for me.
—Claire Yar
This story was related to the Innocent Man by John Grisham that I previously reviewed. Its about another set of men that the same prosecutors and detectives decided were guilty of rape and murder despite a lack of evidence AND evidence to the contrary. Like the "confession" in the Innocent man, the detectives convinced two poor men with less than average intelligence that a crime had been committed the way that they apparently believed. Initially the detectives got the two men to implicate a thi
—Kelly
The actual details of the case distressed me. The first thing I had to do when I'd finished was google to see if the two guys were still in prison. As far as I can tell, they are. On the basis of the detail given by Mayer this appears to be a huge miscarriage of justice. The story was compelling. I feel desperately sorry for all involved but on the basis of what I read, I cannot see why these men are still in jail. Never was a more compelling case made for not having the death penalty. As far as the actual writing is concerned - this is a long, very detailed book. At times a little too detailed, I felt but I do understand the need to include everything. Despite the length and the complexity of some of the details, it was riveting. All I can hope is that I don't ever get arrested for anything because who can you trust? lawyers for each side twist the facts for their own benefit. Evidence was ignored. Evidence was missed. Incompetence ruled. Truly horrifying.
—Barbara Elsborg
