The Weight of Someone Else's Sin

Clarance Goode Jr. has been on Oklahoma's death row for nearly nineteen years for three murders he did not commit. No DNA. No fingerprints. No weapons. No physical evidence of any kind placing him at the Thompson house on the night of August 25, 2005. What the state had was the word of a woman who had threatened her brother's life and was never charged, the word of a man who told police he was blacking out on a drug cocktail the night of the killings, and bullets "found" by a Tulsa detective later convicted of planting evidence. Forty-two people had their convictions overturned because of that detective. Clarance Goode has never been granted a hearing. The Weight of Someone Else's Sin tells his whole life: the boy on the north side of Tulsa who bit his baby brother's finger on his third birthday, the teenager followed through stores and thrown to the ground in front of his own home, the young father who made choices he is not proud of and has owned ever since, the man who rebuilt after federal prison, buried his father, lost his two closest friends in a single week, then answered the phone when someone he knew called for help. That phone call put him within reach of people who would lie to save themselves. A prosecution built on those lies did the rest. The Rev. Dr. Jeff Hood, Clarance's spiritual advisor, has heard him confess to everything he ever did. He has NEVER heard him confess to this. Hood has accompanied thirteen people to their executions. He knows what guilt sounds like. He knows what innocence sounds like. This book is his witness. Clarance Goode will not plead guilty to a crime he did not commit, not for a life sentence, not for anything. The state of Oklahoma is preparing to kill him anyway. Read his story. Remember his name. Then do something about it.