Book Recommendations by Bruce- “Framed: Astonishing True Stories of Wrongful Convictions” by John Grisham and Jim McCloskey.

As I continue to serve on the board of Oregonians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, more is being revealed to me about the death penalty here in Oregon, across the United States, and around the world.

While preparing for a presentation on the death penalty, I learned about Witness to Innocence, a national organization in Philadelphia made up entirely of exonerated death row survivors. For more than twenty years, they have raised awareness about wrongful capital convictions.

Since the reinstatement of the death penalty in the United States in 1976, 201 innocent men and women have been released from death row, including some who came within minutes of execution. I thought to myself: How could this be? If 201 innocent people have been exonerated, there must be others currently sitting on death row—or who have already been executed.

One Saturday at the Book Bin in Salem, I was browsing the new book section when Framed caught my eye. I purchased it immediately.
The authors are John Grisham—writer of numerous #1 bestsellers and a board member of the Innocence Project and Centurion Ministries—and Jim McCloskey, who founded Centurion Ministries, the first organization in the world devoted to freeing the wrongfully convicted.

Each author presents five well-researched true stories of wrongful convictions. I had never delved deeply into this issue before, but the book opened my eyes to how easy it is to convict an innocent person of murder—and how extraordinarily difficult it can be to reverse that conviction when new evidence emerges.

From the ten stories in Framed, several common factors contributed to wrongful convictions:

• Racism

• Perjury and lying

• Police and judicial misconduct

• Forced confessions

• Inadequate defense counsel

• Torturous interrogations

• Corruption within the court system

• Prosecutorial misconduct

• Self-proclaimed “experts” with no real qualifications

• Faulty scientific or forensic evidence

• Police misrepresenting polygraph results, even when the person passed

In conclusion, Framed is a well-written and thoroughly researched book that reveals, through ten compelling true stories, just how easy it is to convict the wrong person for murder—and how difficult it can be to correct such an injustice when new evidence comes to light.

Bruce Stock
OADP Board Member

 

If you are interested in purchasing and/or reading the recommended book, please visit here. Please be advised that Oregonians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty does not receive any affiliate commissions, royalties, or any other form of monetary compensation for recommending this book. Our recommendation is based solely on its alignment with our mission and educational value.