NEW VOICES: John Grisham on Capital Punishment

Acclaimed author John Grisham recent­ly told The Kansas City Star that the death penal­ty should be ​“abol­ished for­ev­er” in the United States. ​“I think the sys­tem is so bad­ly flawed that all exe­cu­tions should be stopped.… Let’s start with the basic con­cept of a fair tri­al. We are so far away from that in every state in this coun­try,” said Grisham, an attor­ney whose views on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment start­ed to shift when he wrote ​“The Chamber,” a nov­el that deals with an exe­cu­tion. Grisham’s most recent best-sell­ing book, ​“An Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town,” relates the wrong­ful con­vic­tion and free­ing of death row inmate Ron Williamson of Oklahoma. Grisham said he believes inno­cent peo­ple remain on death row and that the mar­gin of error in death penal­ty cas­es is sim­ply too high. Grisham now rais­es funds for orga­ni­za­tions that address wrongful convictions. 

(The Kansas City Star, May 11, 2007). See Innocence and New Voices.