While we've been spending a lot of time over the last few weeks concentrating on Tennessee's own innocent man on death row, Paul House, but we should remember that the Paul House case, is sadly not unique. I was reminded of this when I got an email from the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) this morning, which included a plug to shot for NAMI related products at Amazon.com with part of the proceeds going to NAMI. One of the books that was included in the Amazon click-on bar was The Innocent Man, John Grisham's first ever non-fiction book, telling the story of an innocent man sentenced to death in Oklahoma.

This book has been getting a lot of attention and being read by a lot of people, and I think that it's terrific that more and more people across the country are getting clued in to what we've always known - the death penalty is dangerously inaccurate and unjust in its application.

And now, according to the NCADP blog, there's a chance of The Innocent Man becoming a movie! Wouldn't that be great? A real-life story of exoneration told as a major motion picture. If it had half the effect that Dead Man Walking did on the national debate on the death penalty a decade ago, think where we would be.

So there is a lot to look forward to this holiday season. Hopefully we will get Paul House home to his mother for Christmas, and maybe we'll have more good news for the national abolition movement as well.