Mr. Book just finished Framed: Astonishing True Stories Of Wrongful Convictions, by John Grisham and Jim McCloskey.

This is John Grisham’s second non-fiction book on the death penalty, following Innocent Man. Grisham co-authored this latest one with Jim McCloskey, who founded Centurion Ministries, which was the nation’s first group devoted to overturning false convictions and have been freed at least 70 innocent people who had been wrongfully convicted. The 10 chapters alternated between Grisham writing one, based on reading the files and news accounts, while McCloskey wrote the rest—all of which were cases that he handled.

These cases pointed out so many problems with the criminal justice system, such as coercing forced confessions, intentional misconduct by the police and prosecutors, tunnel vision in investigations, jailhouse snitches, racial and gender discrimination and junk science.

As Grisham pointed out, “Among innocence advocates and lawyers, it is often said that it is much easier to convict an innocent person than to get one out of prison. To convict, all that’s needed is an arrest, with the everpresent presumption of guilt, then a trial in which the authorities rely on lying witnesses who will say anything to avoid more time behind bars. Undoing such a mess takes years of pro bono labor by dedicated innocence lawyers, and hundreds of thousands of dollars for testing, experts, and investigators. It also takes some luck.”

I give this book an A. Goodreads requires grades on a 1-5 star system. In my personal conversion system, an A equates to 5 stars. (A or A+: 5 stars, B+: 4 stars, B: 3 stars, C: 2 stars, D or F: 1 star).

This review has been posted at my blog, Mr. Book’s Book Reviews, and Goodreads.

Mr. Book finished reading this on November 10, 2024.