What would you do, what would run through your head if you were charged with the crime of rape and didn’t do it? America has one of the world’s best justice systems, but even in America, the justice system can, and sometimes does, fail, and the innocent sometimes get sent to prison for years, decades, or longer. We all hear the stories on the radio or the news, or watch similar dramas play out on television programs or movies, or read about the wrongfully imprisoned in potboilers by authors like John Grisham. The Nobel Prizener by Herman Franck, Esq., is a similar novel, about a man who gets falsely accused of rape, and receives a lengthy sentence when certain evidence that should have exonerated him is given little weight by the jury in comparison with the alleged victim’s testimony. The man, John Carver, is a brilliant economist who is honored with the Noble Prize in Economics while in prison for his valuable and important theories and how they lead to the world’s countries coming out of a global recession.
But, how did he get to prison in the first place? What series of horrendous and inexplicable events could have led one of the most promising and insightful economists in America to being imprisoned for a rape he didn’t commit? Why would a woman (Gloria Fithe) lie in open court about being raped, knowing it could potentially ruin someone’s life? There should have been no way that John Carver’s life should have taken the unforeseen twist and turns that it did, and as I was reading it, I couldn’t help but to think: “There but for the grace of God go I,” because, sadly, given the wrong chain of unlucky circumstances, anyone could be railroaded much like Carver was, if not for rape then for some other crime.
The novel begins with the very dramatic deliberations of the Swedish Academy of Sciences to determine if John Carver is worthy of receiving a Nobel Prize in Economics. Two of the members are engaged in a long-standing debate over the matter, to try to sway the other members to vote for or against awarding the prize to Carver, despite his conviction and sentence of sixty- four years for rape. Olav Swenson takes the strongly vociferous stance against Carver being awarded the medal, and Erik Jarlsborg supports the view that John Carver was convicted wrongly and evidence that could have exonerated him was ignored by the jury, so Carver deserves to win the Nobel Prize. Carver, by a vote of six to three, is warded the Nobel Prize. As Herman Franck, Esq. Writes about the decision:
Dr. John Carver, a Ph.D in Economics from Stanford University, residing in Folsum State Prison in California, serving out his sixty-four-year sentence for the highly questionable rape of a woman just became the first prisoner to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics.
Following this opening chapter are a few giving background information about Craver’s life and academic history. Then, in the fourth chapter, “The Romance of the Economist,” John meets Gloria Fithe for the first time, the woman who he would date and have consensual sex with twice before she finally accuses him of rape when confronted by her boyfriend, Karl Bramsworth. She does not tell Carver she has a boyfriend, so it’s a definite shock to him when Gloria stops at Stanford’s Tresseder Student Union building and he’s yanked out of her Porsche by Karl accompanied by her screams that he had raped her. Bramsworth starts punching and kicking Carver, and yells at one of his friends to go get the police.
This, as you might be able to tell, is the point in the novel where things go steadily from bad to worse for Carver. Being wrongfully accused of rape is bad enough, but then one of the cops roughs him up on the way to prison, hitting him in the stomach, and telling him he has no rights except ones like the right to confess and to not say otherwise, and then to rot in prison for the rest of his life. Also, his bail gets set at a quarter of a million dollars, which he can’t afford to pay, so he’s forced to wait in his prison cell until his trial. His Public Defender lawyer advises him to plea bargain to a lesser charge, but he refuses to, because he’s innocent. Pleading guilty to the lesser charge might have ended with him being sentenced to a year, but able to get out in eight months. When he eventually does try to plea bargain, a little later, it gets rejected.
The Noble Prizener is a dramatic depiction of some of the injustices that prevail in our judicial system. It’s a novel of one man’s heroic fight to stand up and proclaim his innocence despite being given a lengthy sentence for the crime of rape based on circumstantial evidence and largely the testimony of one woman, the alleged victim. I won’t give anything else away, but it’s a book that will keep you on the edge of your seat wanting to find out about John Carver’s ultimate fate. Herman Franck, Esq., is a lawyer himself, and his expertise at writing about America’s judicial system and the chapters involving Carver’s trial help to make the novel be very realistic and dramatic at the same time. I recommend you check out The Nobel Prizener, and add it to your reading lists, today!
A Prize-Winning Courtroom Drama
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