Framed
Astonishing True Stories of Wrongful Convictions
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4.1 • 343 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
#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.
Look for John Grisham’s forthcoming legal thriller, The Widow. This time, the verdict isn’t the end of the story.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
In this nonfiction book, John Grisham teams up with Centurion Ministries’ Jim McCloskey to shine much-needed light on the injustice baked into the American legal system. They run through 10 cases (out of hundreds considered) where someone innocent was sent to prison, if not death row, based on flawed evidence and coached testimony. In almost every case, the real criminal was clear and obvious—and ignored by the authorities. The whole process comes across like a warped version of Law & Order where police, prosecutors, and frequently criminals collude to lie, cheat, obscure, and suppress. Closed cases and high conviction rates are the goals, not truth and justice, and it takes years (or decades) to overturn a conviction. The number of times the rules of law are blatantly ignored by the people entrusted to uphold them is staggering, and the authors’ frustration at these systematic failures is palpable. Framed exposes, once again, the deep problems of American justice and offers a reminder that ignoring the issues equals complicity.
Customer Reviews
Corrupt
I had know idea so many innocent people have been killed in jail because of a corrupt government.
Average
Another average book. Wish they were as good as his old stuff.
FRAMED
By the end of this book I was in tears! For all of these men to have been convicted over & over & mostly due to prosecutors using snitches, who were purposely put in cells with the defendant, to then testify & LIE, LIE, LIE! My heart pounded through most of the book! Having worked in an appellate defender’s office for 19 years, & on a couple of death penalty cases, I unfortunately saw some of this actually happen. As I said before, by the end, I was in tears with my heart broken for these men!