From The Marshall Project:
John Grisham is... well, you know who John Grisham is. His 29th legal thriller, “The Whistler”, a tale of corruption in the judiciary, sits in Grisham’s customary seat atop the current New York Times best-seller list. It prompted Janet Maslin, one of the paper’s book critics, to write that the author has “fought harder for truth, justice and the American way than anyone this side of Superman.” And not just in his novels. He answered questions from The Marshall Project by email.
The Marshall Project: You've been a longtime supporter of the Innocence Project and have written, in addition to some of the most successful popular fiction on law and justice, a nonfiction account of wrongful conviction (“The Innocent Man”). You've clearly thought about the shortcomings of the criminal justice system. What advice would you offer to Jeff Sessions, Donald Trump's choice to be attorney general?
John Grisham: I would never advise Mr. Sessions on how to handle his job, but I hope he understands that there are thousands of innocent people in prison serving long sentences for crimes committed by others; that their convictions could have been avoided and the real perpetrators brought to justice; that many segments of our criminal justice system are broken and must be fixed; that untold millions of dollars could be saved by criminal justice reforms, not to mention the avoidance of human suffering; that mass incarceration is not working at any level; that the death penalty is unfairly used; that the use and possession of most drugs should be decriminalized, not legalized; and that most prisons for women should be closed.
The two of us could have a long conversation.
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