Since releasing “Innocent Man” in 2006, best-selling author John Grisham has turned his focus on exposing the perils inherent in the criminal justice system, even penning some nonfiction. But that’s not always easy. Grisham said he can “knock off a novel in six months,” but with nonfiction, “you have to be accurate. And I’m not good at being accurate.”
Grisham appeared at the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project luncheon at the Grand Hyatt Wednesday, where the author and the subjects of “Innocent Man” told their tales of being wrongfully convicted of the crimes of murder, rape and robbery.
A group of seven men and women of all ages and backgrounds talked about being found guilty of the kind of crimes that seem straight from Grisham’s fiction. But in the sort of twist only found in such novels, all have been exonerated recently. Although fortunate to now be free from behind bars — a combined 95 years — all seven shared the same feeling, that life can never be the same.
