November 25, 2024 • 12 mins
John Grisham is no stranger to success, having written 50 consecutive number one best sellers.
When he’s not writing, he works for the Innocence Project and Centurion Ministries, helping get innocent people released from prison.
A majority of his work are legal thrillers, but this time he’s taking a step into a realm he’s less familiar with: nonfiction.
‘Framed’ is Grisham’s second nonfiction book, detailing the true accounts of ten people who were wrongfully convicted.
He told Mike Hosking that he and Centurion Ministries founder Jim McCloskey have been considering writing this book for a number of years.
“The stories are so, they’re so terrible, but they’re also very compelling, and really gripping stories.”
Grisham says that he’s trying to make a change with this novel, and raise awareness for the issues within the criminal justice system in the United States.
“Trying to raise awareness, trying to raise a few bucks for the innocents, for advocates in the country,” he said.
“There’s a purpose behind it.”
LISTEN ABOVE
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
John Grisham is back with a twister. He's written fifty
consecutive number ones, of course, most of them legal thrillers. Framed, though,
is only a second non fiction piece of work. Part
of his life these days is working with the Innocents
Project and Centurion Ministries, helping innocent people get out of prison.
That is what framed us about ten extraordinary real accounts
of people wrongfully convicted. John Grisham is with.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Us morning, happy to be here, a good scene again, and.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
As far as Jim McCloskey is concerned, tell us all
about him.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
He's a great American hero. He's spent the last forty
five years exonerating innocent people who were in prison, and
he worked by himself for many years, and now he
has a nice organization, Centurion Ministries. They have exonerated seventy
two people two women, I think are the rest men
(00:52):
who were wrongfully convicted and stashed away in prisons for
as long as thirty years thirty seven years. And Jim
got him out them out through by a combination of
hard work, investigative prowess, and leaning on people to give
him money and lawyers to work for free. And he's
an amazing person.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
How did you hook up with him?
Speaker 2 (01:11):
I wrote a book called Innocent Man that came out
in two thousand and six. My first work of nonfiction
is about a wrongfully convicted man, and Jim and I
met over that book and became very close friends for
the past fifteen years, and I'm on his board now.
We've talked about doing this book for a number of
years because these stories are so They're so terrible, but
(01:32):
they're also very compelling and really gripping stories.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Is it cathotic work?
Speaker 2 (01:41):
I don't know about that. I think I approached it
from a point of view. First of all, it's good storytelling.
I'm always looking for a good story. It's also trying
to make a change, trying to raise awareness, trying to
get people and lawmakers to look at the problem. We
have so many huge problems in America and our criminal
justice system. It's not a top ten issue anywhere. It's
(02:04):
it's just criminal. You know, there are criminals. So trying
to raise awareness, trying to raise a few bucks for
the innocence of advocates in the country. So yeah, it's
just you know, there's there's a purpose behind it.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Does it get any better? I mean, we've had similar troubles,
nothing like America obviously, but similar troubles. But it was
a time and place like it was in the eighties
and things have got better. Has that happened in America
or not?
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Yes? And no crime is down, violent crime is down.
There are fewer executions this year than last year. That
trend is really down. There are fewer death penalty verdicts
in America. The death penalty is dying a slow death
in America, which is good. Police are now using DNA
to solve crimes. So we're making slow progress there. You know,
(02:54):
we're trying to pass laws that make wrongful convictions harder
and harder to come by. So yeah, that's saying we're
making a little small progress, a little progress.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
Is it hard if you set out and you started
today to find an innocent person in jail that faces
the death penalty? Is it hard to find a case?
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Note at all? No, note at all, none at all.
There have been one hundred and sixty people in America
in the last thirty years sent to death row who
were later exonerated. That's why the death penalty has got
to go. It's so unfair and it's not correct. It's
not applied smartly or evenly. So yeah, you can. You can.
(03:33):
There are about fifty different innocence projects around the country,
all sort of related, but all independent. You can volunteer
at an innocence project anywhere in this country. There are
three here in Virginia and sign up as a volunteer.
They've got a list of their cases, and they've got
a list of their clients. In prison, you can find
innocent people real fast. In prison. Are those who claim
(03:55):
to be innocent. Do your own investigation, look at the facts,
and they're they're easy to find.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Does it not work? Where you get an innocent person,
they're exonerated and the system goes, this must not happen again,
and therefore something improves.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Well, that's happened so many times in the last thirty years.
These horrible exonerations are these horrible, wrongful convictions. And you
see a guy walk out after thirty years and somebody,
the real killer was never found because the cops botched
this case a bad and we wring our hands and say,
how can this happen? How could this happen? Well, one
purpose of the book is to show you how it happens.
(04:32):
But you know we say. We never say, oh, it
can never happen again, because we know it's going to
happen again. There are just too many decent people in prison.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Is it botched through incompetence or is it botched through
things like racism?
Speaker 2 (04:46):
That both of those are huge factors. The ten stories
we feature Inframed deal with willful misconduct, bad conduct by
the police, the prosecutors, and the experts. It's just almost
intentional what they did, how they ignored real evidence. You
can't believe these cases. When Jim and I were writing
a book, we'd finish the story and send it off
(05:08):
to New York and our editor would call it every
time and say, this cannot be true. These cases can't
be true. I guarantee you they're all true. But it's
Racism is a huge factor in confidence, is a huge
factor in old fashioned, downright what we say meanness, willful
misconduct is any is.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Some of the people in law enforcement in America are
elected to office. Is that part of the problem or.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Not huge part, huge part. We elect our prosecutors most
of them, we elect most of our judges most of them.
And politics gets involved in the campaigns. Everything is so
politicized over here that it's bound to be it's bound
to infect races for prosecutors and judges, that we should
(05:53):
not elect any judge anywhere in America or any prosecutor.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
All right, listen, what do you hope to get out
of this book? Because I mean, once your name gets
associated with something, I'm assuming you want some wheels to
do well.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
We would love to obviously raise awareness. We hope that
somebody somewhere, some lawmakers, some judge, somebody will read the
book and have an awakening. We would love for it
to inspire others to get involved with innocence work. We'd
love to raise a few bucks because innocence projects around
the country operate on shoe strings. And it's a proven
(06:28):
it's an easy fact. We all know it. The more
money you have for innocence work, the more innocent people
you can get out to hire experts and testing and
lawyers and all that. So they're all desperate for cash.
Every instance project in America is strapped for cash, and
we're trying to raise a few bucks.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Is it also true to say that if you are
arrested and you do have money, you can afford better
legal representation, and maybe if you are innocent, you don't
end up on death row.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
I have never met a wealthy person on death row.
They're not there. Okay, they're not there.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
So you can get if you get a good lawyer.
The case I was reading the day a guy called Robison,
Robert Robinson. He was due for execution. You were involved
in this case. He was due for execution seventeen October.
Was he executed?
Speaker 2 (07:13):
No, he got a miracle stay at the last moment,
but ninety minutes to go. This is Texas, Okay, so
the deck is stacked against him. We're still in court
his law. He has a huge legal team because he's
innocent and we have experts to prove it. We're trying
to get the Texas course to take another look, and
they don't want to, so we're fighting. He is about
(07:34):
to probably get another execution date, which will be setting
ninety days down the road. So we're about to go
through the whole process again. We had a miracle last time.
We'll try it again. Missouri had a guy a few
years ago who had his last meal three times. Okay,
he was given his last meal. Talk about cruel, cruel.
Poor guy's about to die. It's his last meal three times,
(07:57):
last minute's stay, he goes back to his cell. Happens
all the time over here. It's a crazy system.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
How do you not become I mean, I'm sure you are,
but how do you not become sort of consumed with
emotion once you evolve yourself with these cases.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
I'm not emotional, so I don't get emotional over things
I can't control. I've never witnessed an execution. I'm sure
that would have a huge impact on me. I've talked
to lawyers who have and they all say, don't do it,
Just don't do it. If you could avoid it, that
would be very emotional. I get emotional when they walk
out of PRISM. When these guys walk out after twenty
(08:35):
five years and their mothers are waiting on them, and
their mothers never lost hope. That mothers always knew they
were innocent, and we finally proved that. Somebody proves it
on me, some initial instance groups and some lawyer proves it.
They get the DNA testing, they walk out of PRISM
and there's not a dry eye anywhere. Once a year
at Centurion Ministries, Jim mccloskey's group in Princeton. He has
(08:57):
a family weekend. All of his exgneries come back and
they bring their wives and kids and what their grandkids.
It's a huge it's a huge weekend. I've been there
several times and there are times there's not a dry
eye anywhere. You just you know, you're all wrapped up
in These guys have suffered so much and now they're free.
So it's a there's a lot of emotion at certain times.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
Fantastic. Well, I hope the book goes well, and I
hope it draws a lot of attention to the issue.
While we've got you, I cannot go past what's happened
in the last couple of weeks and you'll find country.
What do you make of it all?
Speaker 2 (09:31):
I don't know where to start. I mean, it's we're
all traumatized. We we we're just kind of sleep walking
through the aftermath of a nightmare. And you know, my
friends and I we we're sort of tired of talking
about all the things that went wrong. And now we're
braced for another chaotic day in the world of American government.
(09:53):
And it hadn't even really started yet to have to
have for one man to have this much battle with
the Congress and the courts and to have such a
lack of common sense, it's going to be a disaster.
So we're kind of bracing ourselves for like four years
we've never seen before. I feel sorry for the rest
of the world because you know, the rest of the
(10:14):
world kind of depends on us to be the democratic,
not savior, but monitor of the world, the heartbeat of
the world. And we know our democracy is really really
in danger right now.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
So you would argue sixteen through twenty versus twenty four
through twenty eight. Twenty four through twenty eight, it's going
to be worse than sixteen through twenty.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Much worse because back then, at sixteen through twenty, he
was facing reelection, so we had to at least think
about what he was doing and how it might affect
his chances to get reelected. Now he's not, He doesn't
have that burden anymore. He is free to do whatever
he wants, and he wants to be a dictator. He
said that he wants to be a fascist dictator, that
(10:56):
he admires those people, and he will try. We have
no idea he's gonna try. He will, He will try
in many ways to get filthy rich, and he probably
will he'll punish his enemies, he'll purge the government. He
you know it's going to be uh. They're going to
round up around up a lot of illegal immigrants and
ship them somewhere where they're going. That could have a
(11:16):
huge impact on the economy because those people are the workers.
It's you know, it's a nightmare. It's a total nightmare.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
It is a great pleasure as always to have you
on the program. By the way, before we talk next time,
I have you with a significant birthday in the early
part of next year.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
The Big seven zero you got. My wife wished to
plan a birthday party, and I'm not sure I want
to do that. I have to pass quietly. You know,
I don't celebrate birthdays. I'm happy for him now. I'm
happy for birthdays because I've lost so many friends who
didn't make it to seventy. But you know, I'll be happy.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
But let's keep it quiet, go well, John Grisham. Framed
is the book. For more from the Mic Hosking Breakfast,
listen live to news talks it'd be from six am weekdays,
or follow the podcast on Iheartrady Out
John Grisham is back with a twister. He's written fifty
consecutive number ones, of course, most of them legal thrillers. Framed, though,
is only a second non fiction piece of work. Part
of his life these days is working with the Innocents
Project and Centurion Ministries, helping innocent people get out of prison.
That is what framed us about ten extraordinary real accounts
of people wrongfully convicted. John Grisham is with.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Us morning, happy to be here, a good scene again, and.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
As far as Jim McCloskey is concerned, tell us all
about him.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
He's a great American hero. He's spent the last forty
five years exonerating innocent people who were in prison, and
he worked by himself for many years, and now he
has a nice organization, Centurion Ministries. They have exonerated seventy
two people two women, I think are the rest men
(00:52):
who were wrongfully convicted and stashed away in prisons for
as long as thirty years thirty seven years. And Jim
got him out them out through by a combination of
hard work, investigative prowess, and leaning on people to give
him money and lawyers to work for free. And he's
an amazing person.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
How did you hook up with him?
Speaker 2 (01:11):
I wrote a book called Innocent Man that came out
in two thousand and six. My first work of nonfiction
is about a wrongfully convicted man, and Jim and I
met over that book and became very close friends for
the past fifteen years, and I'm on his board now.
We've talked about doing this book for a number of
years because these stories are so They're so terrible, but
(01:32):
they're also very compelling and really gripping stories.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Is it cathotic work?
Speaker 2 (01:41):
I don't know about that. I think I approached it
from a point of view. First of all, it's good storytelling.
I'm always looking for a good story. It's also trying
to make a change, trying to raise awareness, trying to
get people and lawmakers to look at the problem. We
have so many huge problems in America and our criminal
justice system. It's not a top ten issue anywhere. It's
(02:04):
it's just criminal. You know, there are criminals. So trying
to raise awareness, trying to raise a few bucks for
the innocence of advocates in the country. So yeah, it's
just you know, there's there's a purpose behind it.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Does it get any better? I mean, we've had similar troubles,
nothing like America obviously, but similar troubles. But it was
a time and place like it was in the eighties
and things have got better. Has that happened in America
or not?
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Yes? And no crime is down, violent crime is down.
There are fewer executions this year than last year. That
trend is really down. There are fewer death penalty verdicts
in America. The death penalty is dying a slow death
in America, which is good. Police are now using DNA
to solve crimes. So we're making slow progress there. You know,
(02:54):
we're trying to pass laws that make wrongful convictions harder
and harder to come by. So yeah, that's saying we're
making a little small progress, a little progress.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
Is it hard if you set out and you started
today to find an innocent person in jail that faces
the death penalty? Is it hard to find a case?
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Note at all? No, note at all, none at all.
There have been one hundred and sixty people in America
in the last thirty years sent to death row who
were later exonerated. That's why the death penalty has got
to go. It's so unfair and it's not correct. It's
not applied smartly or evenly. So yeah, you can. You can.
(03:33):
There are about fifty different innocence projects around the country,
all sort of related, but all independent. You can volunteer
at an innocence project anywhere in this country. There are
three here in Virginia and sign up as a volunteer.
They've got a list of their cases, and they've got
a list of their clients. In prison, you can find
innocent people real fast. In prison. Are those who claim
(03:55):
to be innocent. Do your own investigation, look at the facts,
and they're they're easy to find.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Does it not work? Where you get an innocent person,
they're exonerated and the system goes, this must not happen again,
and therefore something improves.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Well, that's happened so many times in the last thirty years.
These horrible exonerations are these horrible, wrongful convictions. And you
see a guy walk out after thirty years and somebody,
the real killer was never found because the cops botched
this case a bad and we wring our hands and say,
how can this happen? How could this happen? Well, one
purpose of the book is to show you how it happens.
(04:32):
But you know we say. We never say, oh, it
can never happen again, because we know it's going to
happen again. There are just too many decent people in prison.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Is it botched through incompetence or is it botched through
things like racism?
Speaker 2 (04:46):
That both of those are huge factors. The ten stories
we feature Inframed deal with willful misconduct, bad conduct by
the police, the prosecutors, and the experts. It's just almost
intentional what they did, how they ignored real evidence. You
can't believe these cases. When Jim and I were writing
a book, we'd finish the story and send it off
(05:08):
to New York and our editor would call it every
time and say, this cannot be true. These cases can't
be true. I guarantee you they're all true. But it's
Racism is a huge factor in confidence, is a huge
factor in old fashioned, downright what we say meanness, willful
misconduct is any is.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Some of the people in law enforcement in America are
elected to office. Is that part of the problem or.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Not huge part, huge part. We elect our prosecutors most
of them, we elect most of our judges most of them.
And politics gets involved in the campaigns. Everything is so
politicized over here that it's bound to be it's bound
to infect races for prosecutors and judges, that we should
(05:53):
not elect any judge anywhere in America or any prosecutor.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
All right, listen, what do you hope to get out
of this book? Because I mean, once your name gets
associated with something, I'm assuming you want some wheels to
do well.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
We would love to obviously raise awareness. We hope that
somebody somewhere, some lawmakers, some judge, somebody will read the
book and have an awakening. We would love for it
to inspire others to get involved with innocence work. We'd
love to raise a few bucks because innocence projects around
the country operate on shoe strings. And it's a proven
(06:28):
it's an easy fact. We all know it. The more
money you have for innocence work, the more innocent people
you can get out to hire experts and testing and
lawyers and all that. So they're all desperate for cash.
Every instance project in America is strapped for cash, and
we're trying to raise a few bucks.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Is it also true to say that if you are
arrested and you do have money, you can afford better
legal representation, and maybe if you are innocent, you don't
end up on death row.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
I have never met a wealthy person on death row.
They're not there. Okay, they're not there.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
So you can get if you get a good lawyer.
The case I was reading the day a guy called Robison,
Robert Robinson. He was due for execution. You were involved
in this case. He was due for execution seventeen October.
Was he executed?
Speaker 2 (07:13):
No, he got a miracle stay at the last moment,
but ninety minutes to go. This is Texas, Okay, so
the deck is stacked against him. We're still in court
his law. He has a huge legal team because he's
innocent and we have experts to prove it. We're trying
to get the Texas course to take another look, and
they don't want to, so we're fighting. He is about
(07:34):
to probably get another execution date, which will be setting
ninety days down the road. So we're about to go
through the whole process again. We had a miracle last time.
We'll try it again. Missouri had a guy a few
years ago who had his last meal three times. Okay,
he was given his last meal. Talk about cruel, cruel.
Poor guy's about to die. It's his last meal three times,
(07:57):
last minute's stay, he goes back to his cell. Happens
all the time over here. It's a crazy system.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
How do you not become I mean, I'm sure you are,
but how do you not become sort of consumed with
emotion once you evolve yourself with these cases.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
I'm not emotional, so I don't get emotional over things
I can't control. I've never witnessed an execution. I'm sure
that would have a huge impact on me. I've talked
to lawyers who have and they all say, don't do it,
Just don't do it. If you could avoid it, that
would be very emotional. I get emotional when they walk
out of PRISM. When these guys walk out after twenty
(08:35):
five years and their mothers are waiting on them, and
their mothers never lost hope. That mothers always knew they
were innocent, and we finally proved that. Somebody proves it
on me, some initial instance groups and some lawyer proves it.
They get the DNA testing, they walk out of PRISM
and there's not a dry eye anywhere. Once a year
at Centurion Ministries, Jim mccloskey's group in Princeton. He has
(08:57):
a family weekend. All of his exgneries come back and
they bring their wives and kids and what their grandkids.
It's a huge it's a huge weekend. I've been there
several times and there are times there's not a dry
eye anywhere. You just you know, you're all wrapped up
in These guys have suffered so much and now they're free.
So it's a there's a lot of emotion at certain times.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
Fantastic. Well, I hope the book goes well, and I
hope it draws a lot of attention to the issue.
While we've got you, I cannot go past what's happened
in the last couple of weeks and you'll find country.
What do you make of it all?
Speaker 2 (09:31):
I don't know where to start. I mean, it's we're
all traumatized. We we we're just kind of sleep walking
through the aftermath of a nightmare. And you know, my
friends and I we we're sort of tired of talking
about all the things that went wrong. And now we're
braced for another chaotic day in the world of American government.
(09:53):
And it hadn't even really started yet to have to
have for one man to have this much battle with
the Congress and the courts and to have such a
lack of common sense, it's going to be a disaster.
So we're kind of bracing ourselves for like four years
we've never seen before. I feel sorry for the rest
of the world because you know, the rest of the
(10:14):
world kind of depends on us to be the democratic,
not savior, but monitor of the world, the heartbeat of
the world. And we know our democracy is really really
in danger right now.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
So you would argue sixteen through twenty versus twenty four
through twenty eight. Twenty four through twenty eight, it's going
to be worse than sixteen through twenty.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Much worse because back then, at sixteen through twenty, he
was facing reelection, so we had to at least think
about what he was doing and how it might affect
his chances to get reelected. Now he's not, He doesn't
have that burden anymore. He is free to do whatever
he wants, and he wants to be a dictator. He
said that he wants to be a fascist dictator, that
(10:56):
he admires those people, and he will try. We have
no idea he's gonna try. He will, He will try
in many ways to get filthy rich, and he probably
will he'll punish his enemies, he'll purge the government. He
you know it's going to be uh. They're going to
round up around up a lot of illegal immigrants and
ship them somewhere where they're going. That could have a
(11:16):
huge impact on the economy because those people are the workers.
It's you know, it's a nightmare. It's a total nightmare.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
It is a great pleasure as always to have you
on the program. By the way, before we talk next time,
I have you with a significant birthday in the early
part of next year.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
The Big seven zero you got. My wife wished to
plan a birthday party, and I'm not sure I want
to do that. I have to pass quietly. You know,
I don't celebrate birthdays. I'm happy for him now. I'm
happy for birthdays because I've lost so many friends who
didn't make it to seventy. But you know, I'll be happy.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
But let's keep it quiet, go well, John Grisham. Framed
is the book. For more from the Mic Hosking Breakfast,
listen live to news talks it'd be from six am weekdays,
or follow the podcast on Iheartrady Out
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com