515 pages
English language
Published Sept. 16, 2011 by Dell.
For every innocent man sent to prison, there is a guilty one left on the outside. He doesn't understand how the police and prosecutors got the wrong man, and he certainly doesn't care. He just can't believe his good luck. Time passes and he realizes that the mistake will not be corrected: the authorities believe in their case and are determined to get a conviction. He may even watch the trial of the person wrongly accused of his crime. He is relieved when the verdict is guilty. He laughs when the police and prosecutors congratulate themselves. He is content to allow an innocent person to go to prison, to serve hard time, even to be executed. Travis Boyette is such a man. In 1998, in the small East Texas city of Sloan, he abducted, raped, and strangled a popular high school cheerleader. He buried her body so that it would …
For every innocent man sent to prison, there is a guilty one left on the outside. He doesn't understand how the police and prosecutors got the wrong man, and he certainly doesn't care. He just can't believe his good luck. Time passes and he realizes that the mistake will not be corrected: the authorities believe in their case and are determined to get a conviction. He may even watch the trial of the person wrongly accused of his crime. He is relieved when the verdict is guilty. He laughs when the police and prosecutors congratulate themselves. He is content to allow an innocent person to go to prison, to serve hard time, even to be executed. Travis Boyette is such a man. In 1998, in the small East Texas city of Sloan, he abducted, raped, and strangled a popular high school cheerleader. He buried her body so that it would never be found, then watched in amazement as police and prosecutors arrested and convicted Donte Drumm, a local football star, and marched him off to death row. Now nine years have passed. Travis has just been paroled in Kansas for a different crime; Donte is four days away from his execution. Travis suffers from an inoperable brain tumor. For the first time in his miserable life, he decides to do what's right and confess. But how can a guilty man convince lawyers, judges, and politicians that they're about to execute an innocent man?
Dovetails with Just Mercy that I am also reading about wrongful convictions. It was frustrating at times, but that is the reality of last minute death-row appeals and the limitations of our justice system.
Like many of John Grisham's books, this one is a legal one -- a young man has been convicted of the death of a schoolfellow, and sentenced to death, though on flimsy evidence and an extorted confession. A few days before his scheduled execution in Texas a man confesses to a church minister in Kansas, several hundred miles away, that he was the real murderer, but vascillates about whether to make his confession public or not.
This scenario makes for a dramatic story, as the condemned, but possibly innocent man and his lawyers exhaust all the avenues of appeal, and the man who claims to have done it tries to make up his mind, while the church minister has to decide whether to believe him or not, and what to do about if he does.
While it isn't a great work of literature, it is one of Grisham's best, in …
Like many of John Grisham's books, this one is a legal one -- a young man has been convicted of the death of a schoolfellow, and sentenced to death, though on flimsy evidence and an extorted confession. A few days before his scheduled execution in Texas a man confesses to a church minister in Kansas, several hundred miles away, that he was the real murderer, but vascillates about whether to make his confession public or not.
This scenario makes for a dramatic story, as the condemned, but possibly innocent man and his lawyers exhaust all the avenues of appeal, and the man who claims to have done it tries to make up his mind, while the church minister has to decide whether to believe him or not, and what to do about if he does.
While it isn't a great work of literature, it is one of Grisham's best, in the genre he has made his name in, and it's a good read. It also, like many of Grisham's novels, raises moral and ethical questions about the system of criminal justice. And it's just here that I have some questions about it, and find the story improbable.
Admittedly I am not a fundi on the American criminal justice system, its strengths and weaknesses. I know it mainly from reading novels like Grisham's, and films based on such novels. In both this one, and in another one that I read recently, [b:The appeal|1248179|The Appeal|John Grisham|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1266754366s/1248179.jpg|2934427], Grisham clearly believes that the system of elected judicial officials that prevails in some American states can, and frequently does, lead to miscarriages of justice. And while in novels like this he piles it on a bit thick for dramatic effect, he was himself a practising lawyer before he took up novel-writing, so he does know what he's talking about. And it's not just [a:John Grisham|721|John Grisham|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1198174022p2/721.jpg] who writes stuff like this. [b:To kill a mockingbird|2657|To Kill a Mockingbird|Harper Lee|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1234606708s/2657.jpg|3275794] by [a:Harper Lee|1825|Harper Lee|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1188820730p2/1825.jpg] has a similar theme, as did the film based on it, which I saw more than 40 years ago, and a similar theme is found in several other novels and films.
Twenty-five years ago there was a popular TV series, The A-team that was based on a similar premiss: the A-team would be confronted with corrupt officials in the American judicial system, usually a sheriff and/or judge in a small town who abused their authority, and would correct injustices using spectacular extra-judicial methods. And that was nothing new - the legends of Robin Hood and the corrupt Sheriff of Nottingham go back to the 13th or 14th century.
Bent cops are nothing new. We have them here in South Africa. There are traffic cops who threaten to give tickets for bogus offences, but offer not to if they are offered a "cold drink". Stories of the Rivonia Trial, of Nelson Mandela and his associates, reflect pretty badly on the prosecutor, Percy Yutar, but thought they could have been sentenced to death under the laws of the time, they were not. Perhaps that illustrates Grisham's thesis, since judges in South Africa were not, and are not, elected.
The problem with this book, however, is that Grisham manages to create the impression that the entire American judicial system, and especially that part of it based on elected officials, is corrupt from top to bottom. Of course it adds to the drama of the story, when everything that can possibly go wrong does go wrong. But if it really is as bad as Grisham makes out, then the "free" world is in a lot more trouble than we thought it was.
