The Dreams of Ada – The Wrongful Convictions of Tommy Ward and Karl Fontenot
If you have not read The Dreams of Ada, I would recommend that you do. It is a non-fiction, true crime story of to young men from Ada, Oklahoma who were wrongfully arrested and convicted of kidnapping and murder.
I first read this book shortly after it hit the shelves. This case played no small part in my decision to leave law enforcement to become an attorney. As someone who was raised to trust the police and prosecutors, I was shocked by what I read. If you have read the story you are undoubtedly familiar with the facts of this case. If you have not, I will not spoil it for you, as it is a good read. In short, both Ward and Fontenot were convicted of kidnapping and murder based on Ward’s confession. It did not matter to the investigators or the prosecution that nothing in Ward’s confession proved to be true and there was absolutely no evidence to prove the crime other than the confession. (Denise Haraway’s body was not found until after the trial was over. Further, the prosecution contended at trial that Haraway was stabbed but the actual cause of death was a gunshot wound to the head) Sadly, this case would not be receiving any attention were it not for John Grisham mentioning “The Dreams of Ada” in his new book “The Innocent Man”, a true story of another wrongfully convicted man. (Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz were investigated by the same officers that handled the Ward / Fontenot case and both were prosecuted by Bill Peterson.)
The big question is: How can you get a conviction of murder with nether neither a body nor any physical evidence of a crime?
The common law corpus delicti rule prohibits the introduction of an extrajudicial confession in a criminal case unless the prosecution introduces independent evidence of the corpus delicti. That is, the prosecution must introduce some evidence independent of the confession to establish that the crime described in the confession actually occurred. This rule was outlined in Arizona v. Fulminate, 499 U.S. 279, 111 S.Ct. 1246, 113 L.Ed.2d 302 (1991)
The impetus for the corpus delicti rule traces to several seventeenth century English cases in which defendants were executed for murders of missing “victims” who later turned out to be very much alive. Lord Hale cited two such cases in his 1678 treatise, Pleas of the Crown, in support of his pronouncement that: “I would never convict any person of murder or manslaughter, unless the fact were proven to be done, or at least the body found dead.” In Hale’s first case, a man was convicted for murdering his young niece, who had last been seen begging for her life as he was physically punishing her. The niece, as it turns out, had actually run away after the beating. Unfortunately, this fact became clear only when she returned home to claim her inheritance after her uncle had already been executed.
In the case of Ward and Fontenot, the State offered no physical evidence that would corroborate the State’s claims and lead a prudent person to believe beyond a reasonable doubt that a crime had been committed. Without some physical evidence, proving corpus delicti the confessions of the defendant are inadmissible under Arizona v. Fulminate, 499 U.S. 279, 111 S.Ct. 1246, 113 L.Ed.2d 302 (1991).
Attempts are being made to free Tommy Ward and Karl Fontenot but it is a slow, bleak process. The remaining question is this: How do we make amends for the 22 years that two innocent men spent in incarceration?
