DA beats John Grisham-backed foe
ADA — Don’t count District Attorney Paul B. Smith among the millions of fans of best-selling author John Grisham.
In an admittedly unusual move, Grisham interjected himself into the district attorney’s race here last month.
The Mississippi writer harshly criticized Smith, telling voters it was “time to start cleaning up the mess by bringing some integrity to the office.” Grisham and his wife, Renee, donated $2,700 each to Smith’s opponent. Smith won anyway. “It was a surprise and flabbergasting,” said Smith, the district attorney for Pontotoc, Seminole and Hughes counties.
Smith, a Republican from Seminole, had 12,998 votes (58.87 percent) in the general election Nov. 6. His opponent, Joshua Edwards, a Democrat from Ada, had 9,080 votes (41.13 percent).
Smith said Monday that Grisham also lent his voice to a last-minute robocall “encouraging people to vote for my opponent.”
“They threw the kitchen sink at us. It’s quite daunting when you look back on it,” said Smith, who was appointed DA last year. “My wife and I, we don’t know beans about politics.”
He said he won because he and his supporters worked hard, and his daughter made “smoking good” radio commercials for the campaign.
Grisham is best-known for his legal thrillers. His latest, “The Reckoning” was released in October.
His only nonfiction book is about the 1982 murder of a cocktail waitress in Ada. The 2006 book, “The Innocent Man,” focuses on the wrongful 1988 conviction of Ron Williamson. The book depicts Bill Peterson, the prosecutor at the time, as partly responsible.
Grisham refers to the Williamson conviction in an Oct. 30 letter to the editor of The Ada News.
“Please forgive an outsider for meddling in your politics. I wouldn’t normally think of doing so; however, I know a lot of the history behind a certain job that’s on the November ballot,” he wrote.
Grisham in the letter pointed to five other convictions in the 1980s that he described as wrongful.
“Their fraudulent convictions were obtained by the use of lying jailhouse snitches, junk science,
coerced confessions and eyewitness identifications that were manipulated,” Grisham wrote.
“With a population of 18,000, Ada ranks as one of the worst places in the country for wrongful convictions, per capita. It’s time to stop convicting innocent people,” he wrote.
The writer specifically criticized Smith for not clearing one “innocent man,” Perry James Lott, last year of a 1988 rape conviction.
Lott sought to have his conviction overturned after DNA testing on evidence from a rape kit excluded him as the source. He was released in July, more than 30 years after he was arrested for
the rape of an Ada woman inside her home.
Under an agreement, his 300-year prison sentence was reduced to time served but he remains a convict. Smith said in July the unknown DNA likely was from the skin cells of police detectives who gathered evidence or from lab workers.
Smith, 58, stressed Monday he was not involved in any of the complained about convictions from the 1980s.
“His facts about all those cases are a little bit skewed, in my view,” Smith said of Grisham. “The Perry Lott case, he doesn’t have a clue what the real facts of that case are.”
Smith said he was on the
defense his entire campaign, “defending decisions that I had nothing to do with.”
Edwards had told voters “it is time to begin a new era” and promised to “work to change the reputation and legacy of our district attorney’s office” if elected. Edwards congratulated Smith after the election and thanked voters “for making their voice heard.”
Grisham in 2015 spoke out against a bill before the Oklahoma Legislature. He complained to The Oklahoman that the proposal to limit appeals “could seriously hinder the ability of the wrongfully convicted to prove innocence.”
The bill passed the House but died in the Senate.