Framed: True Stories of Wrongful Convictions

The real theme of this book is highlighting the work of Citadel Ministries, which Mr. McCloskey heads. It is like the Innocent Project helping wrongfully convicted inmates get the evidence and legal expertise needed to get a reversal.

These stories do a good job of describing how prosecutions can go wrong when incompetent or biased or lazy police, prosecutors and judges are in charge. But I didn’t like that they use these cases to accuse the whole system of corruption in need of reform. The problem is the people, not the process. The police, prosecutors and judges are a reflection of their communities. After all, the police chiefs, sheriffs, prosecutors and judges are all elected or appointed by elected officials. How else should we pick them?

Why were these specific cases chosen? One case involves racism. Unfortunately that is not surprising that officials in rural Texas would be biased and ready to charge and convict someone because he is black. For years it was difficult for a black defendant to get a fair trial in many parts of the nation and probably still is. Others involved police and prosecutors suffering from severe cases of tunnel vision. For whatever reason, they get mentally locked into prosecuting one suspect and can’t or will not consider other evidence.

The system is designed to avoid errors and is criticized as much for being too lax. Erroneous acquittals, often based on “technicalities,” are as outrageous as framed convictions of innocent people. To help ensure justice, convictions must pass at least five levels of investigation and review. First is police investigate. Then a prosecutor has to review the evidence and decide whether to charge a crime. Then a prosecutor must convince a judge or grand jury in a preliminary hearing that there is enough evidence to show probable cause that a crime was committed by the defendant. Then a full trial must convince a judge or jury beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant committed a crime. Then appellate courts have to review the trial record to determine that it was conducted appropriately. A lawyer must be appointed to represent any defendant that wants one. Suspects can refuse to talk and be interrogated and testify, and no negative inference can be drawn from that. That goes further than just about any other nation to slant the process in favor of innocence and is often criticized as too favorable to suspects while ignoring the rights of victims.

The stories in the book show how police and prosecutors are not necessarily looking for the truth when they investigate. They are considering whether there is enough evidence to convince a judge or jury that the defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The police often don’t do an exhaustive search of every possible defendant. They don’t have the resources to do that in many cases even if they wanted to. The problems happened in these ten cases when the police, prosecutors and judges were lazy or didn’t want to consider the possibility they were wrong. That is when they ignore other possibilities and hide exculpatory evidence even though they are required by the constitution to divulge all evidence to the defense. The line between focusing their efforts and getting tunnel vision can be thin. And some police and prosecutors are just not diligent, reasonable and free of bias. That is the problem this book describes.

The question this book does not address let alone answer is what more can be done about bad people in the system and still have an effective way to identify and prosecute crimes. It is certainly important to understand where problems occur, which these cases do well. But it is equally important to recognize the importance of having a criminal justice system to deal with crimes and the efforts to ensure fairness. That is entirely missing in this book. In reality most cases are handled fairly. The backlash to decriminalization movements happening in many cities now highlights the public’s intolerance for crimes and criminals.

The book at times claims to be an indictment of the whole system and a need for systemic reform. That is unfair and tunnel vision in itself. No other nation has gone as far as we have to avoid convicting innocent people, and that is criticized as much or more than wrong convictions. The book would be much better if it presented these cases to explain how investigations involve evaluating evidence rather than seeking pure truth and mistakes can be made by lazy and biased officials and even by diligent police and prosecutors. The system is not perfect but perfection is impossible. This book would be much better if it said that.

I’m a lawyer but I don’t do criminal cases. Still I remember an old maxim from law school that hard cases make bad law. These are all hard cases that need to be put into perspective relative to the whole system.

Well written and well documented. As many people have indicated, this is a hard read because of the failure of our justice system. It is sad and worrisome that some many have suffered injustices, lost their lives, and in a few rare cases, are exonerated. I highly recommend that everyone read this book, and just maybe truth and justice will prevail.

I absolutely love John Grisham and he is unapologetic in his brutal, honest storytelling. I have had to put the book down a couple of times, not because it’s slow or boring, but because I can’t believe how despicable some of the people in the judicial system are. I’m so glad that JG decided to shine a light on the under handed and criminal tactics that those in power have used to get convictions. I’m from Houston and remember the Clarence Brandley case. No innocent person should spend a day in jail, but to be on death row for 10 years for a crime that he didn’t commit is such a travesty.

I’ve read many of Grisham’s books and have never been disappointed. This True Story book is essential information for people to know and understand how our legal system works and often fails. The stories are so sad that I made it past the third story and had to quit reading. The stories are very depressing, even though these individuals are later exonerated after spending decades in prison through an innocent project.

This book shows how easy it is to convict an innocent person and make them believe they actually committed the crime. So scary!!!

Filled with Contradiction. On one hand, the book is incredibly well written and informative. Every American should read this. On the other hand, one of the most aggravating books I have read recently.

10 cases where the justice system completely failed to provide justice. Innocent individuals imprisoned years or executed for crimes they didn’t commit. Any one of these cases would have made a great Grisham novel about an obsessed idealistic lawyer seeking justice for his innocent client. But, the straight forward, nuts and bolts presentation of the facts make each these stories hard to read, let alone 10 of them in a row. Cops with hunches. Obsessed prosecutors, so convinced they are right that they: knowingly use poorly trained or incompetent experts, purposely ignore evidence, hide evidence or testimony from the defence, using witnesses with poor memories and jail house snitches. Politicians seeking to enhance their hard on Crime reputation. Add a higher court system that protects the system, not the accused. In 25 percent of the DNA exonerations to date, jailhouse snitches were used at trial to obtain the wrongful conviction. Estimates of people wrongly convicted generally range between 4% to 15.4%. The Innocence Project estimates 4% of people in prison for Capital Crimes are innocent. The University of Michigan of Law tracks exonerations. There were 153 exonerations in 2023 alone, bringing the total number of exonerations in the United States since 1989 to 3,478. And these are only the cases where the convicted had someone competent to fight for them.