Ghost of the Innocent Man: A True Story of Trial and Redemption

by Benjamin Rachlin

Overview

A gripping account of one man's long road to freedom that will forever change how we understand our criminal justice system.

During the last three decades, more than two thousand American citizens have been wrongfully convicted. Ghost of the Innocent Man brings us one of the most dramatic of those cases and provides the clearest picture yet of the national scourge of wrongful conviction and of the opportunity for meaningful reform.

When the final gavel clapped in a rural southern courtroom in the summer of 1988, Willie J. Grimes, a gentle spirit with no record of violence, was shocked and devastated to be convicted of first-degree rape and sentenced to life imprisonment. Here is the story of this everyman and his extraordinary quarter-century-long journey to freedom, told in breathtaking and sympathetic detail, from the botched evidence and suspect testimony that led to his incarceration to the tireless efforts to prove his innocence and the identity of the true perpetrator. These were spearheaded by his relentless champion, Christine Mumma, a cofounder of North Carolina's Innocence Inquiry Commission. That commission — unprecedented at its inception in 2006 — remains a model organization unlike any other in the country, and one now responsible for a growing number of exonerations.

With meticulous, prismatic research and pulse-quickening prose, Benjamin Rachlin presents one man's tragedy and triumph. The jarring and unsettling truth is that the story of Willie J. Grimes, for all its outrage, dignity, and grace, is not a unique travesty. But through the harrowing and suspenseful account of one life, told from the inside, we experience the full horror of wrongful conviction on a national scale. Ghost of the Innocent Man is both rare and essential, a masterwork of empathy. The book offers a profound reckoning not only with the shortcomings of our criminal justice system but also with its possibilities for redemption.

"Remarkable . . . Captivating . . . Rachlin is a skilled storyteller."-New York Times Book Review

"A gripping legal-thriller mystery . . . Profoundly elevates good-cause advocacy to greater heights — to where innocent lives are saved."-USA Today

"A crisply written page turner."-NPR

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316311496
Publisher:	Little, Brown and Company
Publication date:	08/15/2017
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Benjamin Rachlin grew up in New Hampshire. He studied English at Bowdoin College, where he won the Sinkinson Prize, and writing at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where he won Schwartz and Brauer fellowships. His work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in the New York Times Magazine, TIME, and the Virginia Quarterly Review. He lives near Boston. Ghost of the Innocent Man is his first book.

Table of Contents

Author's Note xi

Prologue: 1987 3

1 Firm and Unequivocal 7

2 Chris 46

3 Only a Few Additional Weeks 50

4 Lake 52

5 K and O 57

6 Rosen 63

7 Some Ideas of Persecution 67

8 Newman, Coleman, and Weitzel 76

9 The Benefit of Every Reasonable Inference 87

10 A Problem for Everyone 95

11 One of Those Cases 106

12 Nobody Could Be Against This 118

13 In Favorable Times and Difficult Times 130

14 Their Different Individual Viewpoints 143

15 We Must Use Our Judgment 151

16 The Elephant in the Room 167

17 Does Not Admit to Crime 176

18 An Extraordinary Procedure 187

19 A Situation Not of His Making 195

20 We Recommend the Closing of This File 208

21 Some Concerns About His Medical Condition 222

22 Any Cases Where Evidence Had Gone Missing 230

23 In Three Dimensions 231

24 I Can Tell That This Lady Have Went Over My Case 234

25 Everybody Knows He Didn't Do It 238

26 The First Real Test 243

27 They Will Try to Get Me to Sign Papers 252

28 The Last Avenue I Can Think Of to Pursue 257

29 He Spoke About Going Through Changes 262

30 Send Him a Questionnaire 270

31 If They Had Anything, It Can't Match Nothing from Me 272

32 What She Said Happened, Happened 296

33 A Lawyer I've Never Met 304

34 A Type of Panel I've Never Seen 310

35 A Long Time Coming 325

36 Cases of Innocence Still Open 331

Acknowledgments 347

Notes 349

Sources 357

Index 377

What People are Saying About This

Richard Ford

"Ghost of the Innocent Man is nothing less than a masterpiece of investigative reporting and virtuosic writing. It is a book that brilliantly substantiates society's elemental promise to its citizenry—that we not have our freedoms wrongly taken from us. Benjamin Rachlin's book is Greek drama brought into our own times. It will change readers' lives, I think, and inspire them. It's that good."

Editorial Reviews

In Ghost of the Innocent Man, Benjamin Rachlin has taken this far-too-commonplace story…and spun out a captivating, intimate profile of one man's stubbornly persistent efforts to convince others of his innocence…Rachlin fully succeeds…in his rich, intimate portrait of Grimes, who is isolated and alone, whose soul is cracking. With understatement and painstaking reporting, Rachlin introduces us to Grimes, and the slow piling of one humility on top of another. He attempts to address the very human questions that most of us have: When serving time for a crime you didn't commit, how do you not become consumed by anger and bitterness? How do you maintain your equilibrium?

The New York Times Book Review - Alex Kotlowitz

★ 05/08/2017
Justice is unconscionably delayed in this absorbing true-crime saga. Rachlin’s debut recounts the case of Willie James Grimes, a North Carolina man sentenced to life in prison for rape in 1988. Despite having a competent lawyer and a strong alibi, Grimes was convicted on forensic analysis of a hair found at the crime scene and on the victim’s seemingly ironclad—as far as the jury knew—identification. Without procedural errors to appeal and with the physical evidence apparently lost after the trial, the attempts to prove Grimes’s innocence hit a judicial brick wall, resulting in a decades-long stay for Grimes in North Carolina’s prison system. Rachlin weaves Grimes’s Kafkaesque ordeal—Grimes’s chance at parole hinged on his confessing guilt—together with the efforts of lawyer Christine Mumma and other reformers to establish North Carolina’s Innocence Inquiry Commission, an innovative state agency that investigates potential wrongful convictions. Rachlin combines a gripping legal drama with a penetrating exposé of the shoddy investigative and trial standards nationwide, as evidenced by hundreds of postconviction exonerations. Finally, as Grimes moves beyond anger and despair over his plight, Rachlin’s narrative offers a moving evocation of faith under duress. Photos. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

"A crisply written page turner . . . Rachlin painstakingly renders Grimes's life behind bars . . . Deploying the same precision with which he documents Grimes's prison life, Rachlin recounts the arduous and complex work to move the wheels of justice . . . Read Ghost of the Innocent Man to follow its twisted path . . . but don't read for the gripping story alone . . . The National Registry of Exonerations calculates that over 18,000 years have been lost by innocent people serving time . . . Shouldn't we be better than this?"—Martha Anne Toll, NPR


"Remarkable . . . A captivating, intimate profile of one man's stubbornly persistent efforts to convince others of his innocence . . .
Rachlin is a skilled storyteller . . . With understatement and painstaking reporting, he fully succeeds in his rich, intimate portrait of Grimes."—Alex Kotlowitz, New York Times Book Review


"Intriguing . . . A gripping legal-thriller mystery .
. . This is a story that profoundly elevates good-cause advocacy to greater heights-to where innocent lives are saved . . . This empathetic book tells the story of the beginnings of the movement to right a national crisis of wrongful convictions-and of one of its first victories . . . A fine piece of investigative journalism."—Don Oldenburg, USA Today


"Rachlin vividly describes the anguish that would well up in Grimes again and again during his twenty-four years behind bars . . . In
Rachlin's skilled hands, Grimes's story triggers indignation but also confers solace, Grimes [himself] being one of the solacing features."—Dennis Drabelle, The Washington Post

"Dramatic and eye-opening . . . A hopeful story . . . By showing us that the specter of wrongful convictions involves flesh-and-blood human beings, Ghost of the Innocent Man confronts us with the cruelest injustices of the criminal justice system, even as it also holds out hope for a more humane future."—San Francisco Chronicle

"One of the most powerful aspects of Ghost of the Innocent Man is its portrait of time behind bars—the transfers, delays, and letter-writing campaigns that form the scaffolding of lives in limbo . . . A story so important and infuriating it is hard to look away."—Claudia Rowe, Seattle Times

"Ghost of the Innocent Man is nothing less than a masterpiece of investigative reporting and virtuosic writing. It is a book that brilliantly substantiates society's elemental promise to its citizenry-that we not have our freedoms wrongly taken from us. Benjamin Rachlin's book is Greek drama brought into our own times. It will change readers' lives, I think, and inspire them. It's that good."—Richard Ford, -

"Ghost of the Innocent Man is deeply researched and, more importantly, deeply felt. For both reasons and many more, it is a profound meditation on the human condition and a vital contribution to the literature. The endurance and fortitude of Willie Grimes surpass those of any athlete or explorer. The passages in which Christine Mumma assembles lawmen and legislatures of all different creeds to help resolve an urgent national crisis should make us all consider these current times as not just toxic and tragic but filled with the possibility of hope and redemption. In the end, Benjamin Rachlin takes us through the justice system in all its immutability and shows us the light we can wield should we so choose."

—Jeff Hobbs, author of the New York Times bestseller The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace

"Enraging, instructive, and profoundly moving, Ghost of the Innocent Man is a gripping lesson in the terrible costs of our flawed criminal justice system and the power that individuals have to change its course. The story of how a gentle soul like Willie J. Grimes received an undeserved life sentence is heartbreaking-full of human cruelty and carelessness and worse. But in the care and exactitude of Benjamin Rachlin's telling, it is also an inspiring call for readily achievable reform. With judicious compassion, he narrates the errors, omissions, and societal forces that led to this wrongful conviction, setting it all squarely in the context of a persistent national disgrace, and reminding us of our responsibility to work toward true justice. The effect is remarkable and unforgettable."—Eli Sanders, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of While the City Slept

"Ghost of the Innocent Man is an honest and critical look at our justice system. . . [and] a meticulously researched book. It is a must-read for every American who cares about justice."—The Washington Book Review

"An absorbing true-crime saga . . . Rachlin's debut combines a gripping legal drama with a penetrating exposé of the shoddy investigative and trial standards nationwide . . . His narrative offers a moving evocation of faith under duress."
—Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)


"Grimes's story is both compelling and enraging, and his thoughtfulness and persistence propel the story as much as the determination and passion of the lawyers working to establish the Commission .
. . A sobering account of both a wrongful conviction and the structural impediments to fixing miscarriages of justice, with a gut punch of a closing paragraph."—Kate Sheehan, Library Journal (starred review)


"An absorbing story . . . In his moving first book, Rachlin, with confidence and care, relays both the terrifying personal costs and complex legalities, so dependent on fallible humans, of wrongful conviction and imprisonment."—Annie Bostrom, Booklist


"In this compelling tale of crime and punishment (of the wrong person), Rachlin explores a horrible case of wrongful conviction and ultimate exoneration. Willie Grimes maintained his innocence in his 1988 trial, but was convicted on flimsy evidence and served over 20 years behind bars. By twinning Grimes' story with the establishment of North Carolina's Innocence Inquiry Commission, which was responsible for overturning the conviction, Rachlin enlarges the book's scope, making it not merely a chronicle of a serious miscarriage of justice, but a broader indictment of a flawed system, and the prison industrial complex, that made it possible."—The National Book Review

"Ghost of the Innocent Man is plainspoken-frank, yes, but even more potently, unadorned—either when Grimes is speaking or Rachlin is writing . . . The story is clean and tight, emotionally and psychologically expressive and expressionistic, and easily visualized by the mind's eye . . . A fine debut effort."—Peter Lewis, Barnes & Noble Review

From the Publisher

★ 09/01/2017
Journalist Rachlin's account of the founding of the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission and the heartbreaking case of Willie J. Grimes, wrongly convicted of rape and sentenced to life in prison, leaves readers wondering why more states haven't followed this model, instead relying on nonprofits such as the Innocence Project to find and free the innocent. North Carolina's neutral state agency can subpoena evidence and testimony and refers cases to a panel of judges with the power to exonerate. Grimes's story is both compelling and enraging, and his thoughtfulness and persistence propel the story as much as the determination and passion of the lawyers working to establish the Commission. Grimes was convicted without adequate checks on the evidence collected, and his exoneration was delayed by the disposal and poor tracking of what evidence remained. VERDICT This sobering account of both a wrongful conviction and the structural impediments to fixing miscarriages of justice (with a gut punch of a closing paragraph) is for readers and book groups interested in social justice, legal history, and civil rights. [See Prepub Alert, 2/27/17.]—Kate Sheehan, C.H. Booth Lib., Newtown, CT

Library Journal

2017-05-31
A chilling story of wrongful conviction, focused on one man's ordeal, and the growth of the movement to support actual innocence.In his debut book, Rachlin ably manages a complex narrative. In 1988, when the author's subject, Willie Grimes, was tried for a horrific sexual assault in North Carolina, "no one had any clue how often [somebody] was wrongfully convicted in America, or where, or how long he spent imprisoned." Grimes was convicted based on a slipshod investigation and erroneous identification by an elderly, traumatized victim despite numerous witnesses to his alibi and nonviolent character. He began serving his life sentence in disbelief, eventually becoming a Jehovah's Witness while always insisting upon his innocence. Rachlin alternates between this slow tale of Grimes' unjust imprisonment (he would serve over 20 years) and the greater narrative of a growing consensus that protections against such convictions were inadequate. A commission was formed by several lawyers and one conservative judge who had come to realize that "wrongful conviction was a national problem…it ought to concern everyone." This acknowledgement was partly due to the first cases of DNA exoneration, which shook the public's trust in policing, but Rachlin particularly focuses on the determination of attorney Christine Mumma to expose the reality of wrongful conviction: "The doubts she felt now were not technicalities. It was ludicrous to think the courts couldn't distinguish between basic guilt and innocence." Mumma championed a law empowering the Innocence Inquiry Commission to hear wrongful conviction petitions, the first of its kind. Following an intensive investigation by the IIC into Grimes' claim, which included discovery of concealed fingerprint evidence that pointed to the likely perpetrator, a well-known local criminal inexplicably excluded in the initial investigation, Grimes was cleared by the IIC judicial panel. Rachlin builds to this cinematic conclusion with empathetic, thorough (if sometimes gradually paced) prose and solid investigative detail. A sprawling, powerful, unsettling longitudinal account of an overdue legal movement.

Kirkus Reviews

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