Framed: Astonishing True Stories of Wrongful Convictions

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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “The master of the legal thriller” (Associated Press) teams up with “the godfather of the innocence movement” (Texas Monthly) to share ten harrowing true stories of wrongful convictions.

“Each of these stories is told with astonishing power.”—David Grann, author of Killers of the Flower Moon

“Gripping . . . compelling . . . What makes [Framed] important reading isn’t the shock value advertised in the title. It’s the exposure of the infuriating, recurrent factors involved in so many unrighteous convictions.”—The Washington Post

John Grisham is known worldwide for his bestselling novels, but it’s his real-life passion for justice that led to his work with Jim McCloskey of Centurion Ministries, the first organization dedicated to exonerating innocent people who have been wrongly convicted. Together they offer an inside look at the many injustices in our criminal justice system.

A fundamental principle of our legal system is a presumption of innocence, but once someone has been found guilty, there is very little room to prove doubt. These ten true stories shed light on Americans who were innocent but found guilty and forced to sacrifice friends, families, and decades of their lives to prison while the guilty parties remained free. In each of the stories, John Grisham and Jim McCloskey recount the dramatic hard-fought battles for exoneration. They take a close look at what leads to wrongful convictions in the first place and the racism, misconduct, flawed testimony, and corruption in the court system that can make them so hard to reverse.

Impeccably researched and told with page-turning suspense as only John Grisham can deliver, Framed is the story of winning freedom when the battle already seems lost and the deck is stacked against you.

Review

“Grisham does a service by elevating Jim McCloskey, who can inspire all of us to use our privilege in the service of those ensnared in the moral scandal we call a criminal justice system. . . . Years before the Innocence Project began showing Americans that their prisons hold countless people who have committed no crime, he was quietly gumshoeing his way through hard, obscure cases. Without him, it’s hard to imagine Serial or Making a Murderer or the rest of our current wave of prosecution-skeptical nonfiction.”—The New York Times

“Framed is Grisham’s second foray into nonfiction and his storytelling skills are well-displayed here. McCloskey is founder of Centurion Ministries, which works to free the wrongly convicted. . . . [The book is] clinical, carefully assembling the stories of those wrongly imprisoned.”—Associated Press

“The flaws and lethal errors that condemn innocent people in the American legal system have caused too many for too long to needlessly suffer. Jim McCloskey and John Grisham are towering figures in law and literature shining an urgent, compelling, and critically important light on the heartbreaking wrongful convictions that compromise our legal system and remain a national tragedy.”—Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy

“Framed should come with a warning label: Be prepared never to look at the justice system the same way again. In this collection of ten shocking wrongful-conviction cases, each stranger than fiction, you’ll come away outraged by how easily so many prosecutions can and do run off the rails: investigative tunnel vision, coached witnesses, compromised jailhouse snitches, junk science, cultural bias, crooked prosecutors, and even biased judges. How grateful we all should be to John Grisham and Jim McCloskey—for raising the alarm and crusading for true justice.”—Robert Kolker, author of Hidden Valley Road

“In this essential collaboration, John Grisham and Jim McCloskey vividly demonstrate the need to run just as fast, if not faster, to exonerate the innocent as to punish the guilty. In ten shocking true stories, they not only convey the devastating impact of wrongful convictions on each affected person but also sound the alarm for all of us—there but for the grace of God, go I. These are remarkable stories of injustice that need to be told. And retold.”—Preet Bharara, former U.S. Attorney and author of Doing Justice

“These ten stories—bitter, gritty, and heartbreaking—will astound you, will inspire you, will bring your blood up to a roiling boil. Here are crimes of egregious malfeasance, perpetrated by cops, prosecutors, and jurists, that often seem more sinister than the original crimes these authorities were supposed to impartially resolve. Grisham and McCloskey, writing in crisp, propulsive prose, remind us how much hard and thoughtful work we still have to do to make America’s legal system equitable, transparent, and fair.”—Hampton Sides, author of The Wide Wide Sea

“The truth eventually came out in these cases, but that does little to lessen the impact of this sobering look at what happens when we turn a blind eye to injustice. A powerful and infuriating must-read about ineptitude and injustice in America’s legal system.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

About the Author

John Grisham is the author of fifty consecutive #1 bestsellers, which have been translated into nearly fifty languages. His recent books include Camino Ghosts, The Exchange: After the Firm, and his third Jake Brigance novel, A Time for Mercy, which is being developed by HBO as a limited series.

Grisham is a two-time winner of the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction and was honored with the Library of Congress Creative Achievement Award for Fiction.

When he’s not writing, Grisham serves on the board of directors of the Innocence Project and of Centurion Ministries, two national organizations dedicated to exonerating those who have been wrongfully convicted. Much of his fiction explores deep-seated problems in our criminal justice system.

Grisham lives on a farm in central Virginia.

Jim McCloskey founded Centurion Ministries, the first organization in the world devoted to freeing the wrongly convicted. Since its establishment forty years ago, Centurion has freed seventy individuals, all of whom spent decades in prison serving life or death sentences for the crimes of others. McCloskey has a Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary. His memoir, When Truth Is All You Have, was published by Doubleday in 2020.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Preface

John Grisham

In 2006, I published The Innocent Man, a true story about the wrongful conviction and near execution of Ron Williamson. Before then, I had never considered nonfiction—I was having too much fun with the novels—but Ron’s story captivated me. From a pure storytelling point of view, it was irresistible. Filled with tragedy, suffering, corruption, loss, near death, a measure of redemption, and an ending that could not be considered happy but could have been much worse, the story was just waiting for an author. I soon learned that every wrongful conviction deserves its own book.

Since then I’ve met many exonerees, along with their families, lawyers, advocates, and old cellmates. As a group, they are amazing because they somehow survived nightmares that the rest of us cannot begin to comprehend. Most enjoy telling their stories. All are determined to change a broken judicial system and prevent more wrongful convictions. Dozens have written about their ordeals. More than a few have asked me to do the writing.

For a long time I’ve thought about a collection of some of the best stories, but the research got in the way. It is daunting. Thousands of pages of trial transcripts, police reports, witness statements that always seem to vary from one stage to the next, prison records, forensic tests, and petitions, motions, pleadings, and orders written by lawyers and judges and filed, seemingly, by the pound. Novelists can be lazy because we simply make up stuff. Nonfiction is brutal because the research has to be meticulous. You can’t afford to make mistakes.

I met Jim McCloskey about fifteen years ago when he asked me to speak at a Centurion Ministries annual gala at Princeton. Within ten minutes of first shaking hands we were telling war stories of the wrongfully convicted. Jim’s stories are always better, because he lived them. He is part of them. He made the exonerations happen by pounding the streets from coast to coast in search of the truth. Centurion has been involved in about seventy exonerations, and Jim was usually there, outside the prisons, when his innocent clients walked out and into the arms of their loved ones. He was there when they tasted freedom, and he was the reason for it.

At some point a few years back, we began talking about this collection. The idea was simple. I would select five of my favorite stories, and so would Jim. The first challenge was to pick only ten, because there are so many. The second challenge was to limit each story to about 10,000 words. Since each story could fill a library, we knew the task would be formidable. We agreed that each would do his own writing with limited input from the other.

And so we wrote.

Our goal with this book is to raise awareness of wrongful convictions and in some small way help to prevent more of them. It is an effort to shine light on some of the terrible and abusive tactics used by the authorities to convict innocent people.

If we as a society had the political gumption to change unfair laws, practices, and procedures, we could avoid virtually all wrongful convictions.

Jim McCloskey

As John points out, our association and friendship go back fifteen years. We were drawn together by our mutual concern and compassion for those men and women across America who fell victim to a deeply flawed criminal justice system and were falsely convicted and sentenced to a life sentence or to death. John generously volunteered to write the foreword to my memoir, When Truth Is All You Have, published by Doubleday in 2020. That book recounts the forty-year history of Centurion Ministries’ encounters with our nation’s judicial system on behalf of the convicted innocent as well as the personal journey that led me into this work.

Naturally, I was honored when John invited me to cowrite Framed with him. We quickly agreed that each of us would write five stories of real-life cases in which innocent defendants, much to their shock and disbelief, were found guilty of crimes they had absolutely nothing to do with. The five written by me are cases I personally worked on as case manager and lead investigator. Selecting these five from among the seventy or so individuals Centurion successfully freed was a challenge worthy of Solomon. I was fortunate in writing to be able to draw upon Centurion’s voluminous in-house archival records collected during the many years of work on each case. These source materials include, but are not limited to, trial transcripts, police reports, legal briefs, judicial opinions, court records, and Centurion investigative reports.

The subtitle of Framed is Astonishing True Stories of Wrongful Convictions. I can assure readers, no matter what their background, that their response after reading each of these stories will be, “Did this really happen?” To which we the authors answer, “Yes, it did, and it happens far more often than you can imagine.” It is our intention and hope that these stories are not only a compelling read but at the same time serve as a microcosm of what is occurring throughout our nation’s halls of justice. It is our attempt to bring to light systemic flaws in the justice system’s infrastructure that cause untold tens of thousands of innocent souls to interminably languish in prison.

The twenty-three defendants caught in the web of these ten wrongful convictions needlessly spent decades in prison until the truth of their innocence finally emerged and set them free. Four landed on death row, two of whom came within days of execution, while one was tragically executed. Perhaps it will surprise readers that the racial makeup of the twenty-three is almost evenly split, ten white and thirteen black, demonstrating that this kind of injustice easily occurs across racial lines.

Often the real killers were under the nose of the police from the outset of the crime, and in two cases they were the star witnesses for the prosecution. DNA played an important role in several cases but not in most. Perjury by police and civilian witnesses was pervasive in these stories. These convictions were not caused by unintentional mistakes by local law enforcement or misidentification by well-meaning eyewitnesses or honest but erroneous forensic analysis.

No, they were rooted in law enforcement misconduct and chicanery, men and women hell-bent on clearing cases or gaining a conviction through a wide variety of illicit means—subornation of perjury, secret deals with criminals in exchange for their fabricated testimony, coercing witnesses into false testimony or suspects to falsely confess, use of discredited or inept forensic analysts, suppression of exculpatory evidence from the defense, or other acts that obstructed justice and resulted in the ruination of innocent lives to the relief of the actual perpetrators.

Each of the stories takes the reader on a roller-coaster ride, most of which end with truth and justice ultimately prevailing, although at great and unimaginable personal cost to the exonerees and their loved ones. Once freed, the released face the formidable challenge of starting life all over again. It is a testament to the human spirit that so many of them have the will and capability to do so, unburdened with the anger and hate of years past, now filled with a forgiving heart, an enhanced appreciation for the everyday things of life that most of us take for granted, and a desire for a peaceful and quiet existence.

Our hope is that you find this book to be both interesting and informative, and that it provides you with a new perspective on the fallibility of our criminal justice system—a perspective that perhaps you didn’t have prior to reading Framed.

Review:

4.8 out of 5

95.56% of customers are satisfied

5.0 out of 5 stars GRIPPING

M.F. · December 16, 2024

FRAMED – Astonishing True Stories of Wrongful Convictions by Bill McCluskey and John GrishamWell, the title says it. It is a non-fiction book that narrates ten carefully researched and selected stories about people who committed no crime and were either put on life with no possibility of parole or on death row. Were the attorney generals and state lawyers aware of this? Yes. Instead of the presumed innocent until proven guilty situation, we have a justice system establishing their own theory of the crime and finding a presupposed guilty party to fit that theory. Never mind that it is illogical, outrageous and absurd, and only fit for the ungifted fiction writer. And yet, judges accept this without even considering suspicious individuals with strong motives who are right under their nose.Why do that? For political reasons, which is to please an impatient electorate that wants a nation to be safer (when absurdly it gets only more dangerous); sometimes to feed their own egos for fear of public judgement. They sacrifice the innocents for this, bury their conscience and indirectly become murderers themselves.I had my mouth open from outrage and astonishment as I read about a thoroughly corrupt system, and people like you and me doing time, 16 years, 25 years, or being executed. Indeed it is a hard read that may not be your favorite entertainment during this Christmas season, and you may want to wait until next year until you open the book.But thanks to the prose of Jim McCluskey and Grisham’s masterful one, it is gripping and astounding. You tell yourself it’s time to read something else, but it haunts you and you come back. And it should. Whoever thinks capital punishment is fair must go through every line of FRAMED and realize that innocents are killed by a judicial system with no conscience, and that killers go free. Framed will probably become a reference in law school. For my part I am not a law student, but it is not difficult to realize that this is an important book, and I hope that it will lead to the cleansing of our justice system.December 16, 2024

4.0 out of 5 stars Ten true accounts

M.P. · October 26, 2024

Co authors, John Grisham and Jim McClosky, describe in summary fashion the exoneration of wrongfully convicted innocence defendants which sadly includes the execution of one innocence soul. The ten chapters are repleat with examples of tactics used and strategies employed by law enforcement and prosecutors to ensure convictions wrongfully for the advancement of an political career or the salvation of a law enforcement reputation. The reader will be awestruck by some tactics and downright angered by the bumbling efforts and strident violation and defendant rights through perjury of jail house snitches for personal leniency. This is a must read for any critical thinker.

5.0 out of 5 stars I do not like these stories but I highly recommend this book

J.W. · November 19, 2024

I haven't finished Framed yet, because the truth of each story so far is so infuriating that I have to take a break and book-hop to the comfort zone of fiction. Each story is stand-alone and the narratives read like an in-depth 'Sunday read'. They are interesting, but very triggering considering that the locations are familiar (one was super local to me) and the time periods are distant but not before I was born. The endings lack the uplifting polish of fiction and instead just leave you thinking about the lives stolen from these falsely convicted people. It's similar to The Guardians, but with more focus on the injustice rather than the people who work so hard to fix it. It's not enjoyable to read, but it's informative and important to read.

5.0 out of 5 stars Scary stories written well

A.S. · December 29, 2024

No one wants to think they could be falsely accused but-it happened to me 30 years ago and I was terrified. I was fired from my job as I was being accused of stealing a credit card and charging close to $3;000 on it.I was fortunate that I could prove that I was not at the stores and another co-worker had used it and caused me. These stories didn’t end so well - sending people to jail when they were not in any way guilty. If anything, this books teaches you to keep your mouth shut and demand an attorney immediately so the few deceives who ate evil can’t twist your statements.Our system is full of loop holes to allow the guilty to not have to face punishment but those same holes can send innocent men and women to long prison sentences, worth reading

Astonishing Accounts

A. · December 7, 2024

Perhaps the most staggering part of McCloskey & Grisham's accounts of these horrific wrongful conviction stories is the length the conspirators went to to destroy the innocent. That they were more committed to sustaining lies at all costs than to accept the shame & consequences of ruining countless lives for a tick in the win column is diabolical!This was an unbelievable & riveting read!

H. · November 9, 2024

Astonishing and frightening... What a corrupt system!

Important Stories

B.D. · November 12, 2024

These important stories are well-told, just as you would expect from John Grisham. The only reason I gave only 4 stars is that the crime/ rape/ murder scenes are told in such detail.

Great Investigative Expose'

O.s. · November 20, 2024

I enjoyed reading this book.The authors did hours of research to write these stories with all the true facts of each court case. A lot of investigations were done but in somecases it took years to exonerate the accused and point fingers at how crooked /not thorough in their investigations and determined the police were to pin the crime on the wrong persons. I shook my head many times and couldn't believe this kind of things happened. I felt sorry for what the victims had to indure.

John Grisham

A.C. · December 27, 2024

I love John Grisham books and this one did notdisappoint. Suspense and drama kept me involved. Great book JohnI highly recommend

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Framed: Astonishing True Stories of Wrongful Convictions

Name: Framed: Astonishing True Stories of Wrongful Convictions
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