Ten harrowing true stories of wrongful convictions. Framed offers an inside look at the victims of the United States 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. Framed shares ten true stories of men who were innocent but found guilty and forced to sacrifice friends, families, wives, 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.
Grisham’s five are characteristically page-turning retellings of cases previously reported by newspaper and magazine journalists, all of whom he credits. McCloskey’s stories are all ones in which Centurion Ministries got involved, and what they lack, by comparison, in narrative drive, they make up for with inside detail and nuance. Yet what makes this book 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.
McCloskey reminds us never to be self-righteous and exonerate ourselves with easy anger when we’re all capable of shortcuts and complicity ... Grisham seems happy playing second fiddle, even as he hits a few wrong notes ... These blunders aside, 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. Freeing the innocent is just the first step.
His storytelling skills are well-displayed here ... Clinical ... The authors themselves deserve great credit for persevering in their quest to free the innocent.
