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A Comprehensive Timeline of the Murder Cases at the Heart of Netflix's The Innocent Man

Netflix's The Innocent Man Case Facts and Timeline

A Comprehensive Timeline of the Murder Cases at the Heart of Netflix's The Innocent Man

December 23, 2018 by Quinn Keaney

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Justice For Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz

1994 — Williamson gave an interview in prison five years after his conviction, saying he thought Simmons committed the crime. The jail psychologist initially dismissed this as an alter ego of Williamson (he suffered from mental health problems). Although it was later proven that Simmons didn't kill Carter, Williamson never wavered in asserting his innocence.
1994 to 1999 — Fritz tried to appeal his sentencing multiple times but was denied. He later contacted the Innocence Project for help, which put him on the radar of author John Grisham (who went on to write The Innocent Man about the case). During these years, it was discovered that the physical evidence from the crime was going to be tested due to appeals filed by Williamson's legal team, so Fritz filed an injunction to ensure the evidence would not be consumed until the cases were joined and proper DNA testing was conducted.
Spring 1999 — New DNA evidence came to light, suggesting Fritz and Williamson didn't actually kill Carter. It turns out the FBI spent decades overestimating the importance of hair in cases like this. For example, the analyst who testified in Fritz's trial about the hair — it's impossible to say definitively that strands of hair "match" because there's not enough empirical data regarding the frequency of specific class characteristics in human hair. On top of that, DNA testing revealed neither Fritz nor Williamson was a match for the sperm found at the crime scene.
April 15, 1999 — Both Williamson and Fritz were set free and exonerated of their crimes. Williamson was within five days of being executed.
2003 — Williamson and Fritz sued the City of Ada and won a settlement of $500,000, but both felt many residents of the town still believed them to be guilty despite their freedom. They were also scared that the prosecutor, Peterson, and members of the Ada police force would try to bring them to trial again.
2009 — Williamson, who continued to suffer from psychiatric problems, died in his nursing home of cirrhosis at the age of 51. Fritz is still alive but now lives in a nursing home due to a traumatic brain injury he received after getting into a near-fatal car accident. He regularly spends time with his daughter, Elizabeth Clinton, who visits him as much as she can.

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