Reviewed by Charles Kiker
John Grisham, The Confession, Doubleday, 2010
John Grisham’s novels are always good reads. This one is—no other word is adequate—captivating. It is a must read for anyone interested in the injustice of the criminal justice system, especially in Texas and especially as regards capital punishment. It is a recommended read for those not interested in the injustice of the criminal justice system, in the hope that they might get interested.
It is a work of fiction, but not really. So many real events have been worked into this novel that I had to remind myself occasionally that I was not reading the Dallas Morning News, or watching the evening news on television. For example, the judge and the prosecutor are sleeping together—and they are not husband and wife—during the trial of Donte Drumm. The Court of Criminal Appeals closes at 5:00 PM and will not let attorneys in at 5:07 even though they know attorneys are on the way for a last minute appeal. Coerced confessions, jailhouse snitches, perjured testimony—it’s all here.
Donte Drumm, African American star football player at the not quite fictional East Texas town of Slone is accused of the rape and murder of white cheerleader Nicole Ann Yarber. Since no body had been found, there was no actual evidence that a murder had been committed. But Donte was found guilty and sentenced to death.
Shortly before the execution date, Travis Boyette shows up at a Lutheran Church in Topeka, Kansas, and tells Pastor Keith Schroeder that he is actually Nicole’s murderer.
What’s the good pastor to do when he doesn’t know for sure Boyette is telling the truth, but a possibly innocent man is about to go to the death chamber?
I don’t want to tell too much, because I want people to read this real life fiction for themselves.
But I do want to ask this question. “What will happen in Texas, or maybe Mississippi, or maybe somewhere else in the USA when someone is executed, and is exonerated posthumously?”
Reviewed by Charles Kiker
Tulia, Texas
Friends of Justice 
They circle the wagons, stall and hope it is forgotten. Here is an example.
“…the 2006 execution of Cameron Todd Willingham continues to garner international attention. Despite compelling evidence that Willingham was innocent of setting a fire which led to the deaths of his children, Gov. Perry and the courts refused to grant a stay. After Willingham’s execution, a report prepared for the Texas Forensic Science Commission by arson expert Craig Beyler accused the initial investigators of ignoring the scientific method and basing their finding of arson on “folklore” and “myths.”
The problems surrounding this case continued in October 2009 as Gov. Perry removed three of the Commission’s board members—including the chairman—two days before the board was scheduled to review Beyler’s report on the Willingham case. Perry’s blatant attempt to squash the investigation drew fire from all sides.
Perry’s new chairman, John Bradley, immediately postponed the investigation, citing the need to revise policies and procedures before reviewing any cases. The new policies have made it harder for cases to be reviewed by the whole commission, and at a meeting in April, they continued to back-burner the Willingham case.”
http://kalamu.posterous.com/interview-bryan-stevenson-and-michelle-alexan
Bryan Stevenson has been representing capital defendants and death row prisoners in the deep south since 1985 when he was a staff attorney with the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, Georgia. Since 1989, he has been executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), a private, nonprofit law organization he founded that focuses on social justice and human rights in the context of criminal justice reform in the United States. EJI litigates on behalf of condemned prisoners, juvenile offenders, people wrongly convicted or charged, poor people denied effective representation and others whose trials are marked by racial bias or prosecutorial misconduct.
BILL MOYERS: Your passion is the abolition of capital punishment. And relatively, although each case is horrendous in its own right. Relatively few people are affected by capital punishment. Why is it capital punishment has become so symbolic of what you see as the crisis in American justice and American life?
BRYAN STEVENSON: Yeah, well, I think several things. It shapes all of criminal justice policy. It’s only in a country where you have the death penalty that you can have life without parole for somebody who writes bad checks. Somebody else who steals a bicycle. And so, it shapes the way we think about punishment. You know, we’ve gotten very comfortable with really harsh and excessive sentences.
And I think the death penalty permits that. But I also think that it really challenges us, if we will execute innocent people. We’ve had 130 people in this country who’ve been exonerated, proved innocent who were on death row. For every eight people who have been executed, we’ve identified one innocent person. If we will tolerate that kind of error rate in the death penalty context, it reveals a whole lot about the rest of our criminal justice system and about the rest of our society.
1 in 8! I don’t know if that is accurate but it should answer your question.
Sounds like a good read. Do you really want the people who are in charge of the Department of Motor Vehicles in the business of life and death? Advocates of small government and followers of a victim of capital punishment would seem to me to be natural opponents of the expensive thing.
I think the Willingham case is important. The fact that Willingham was convicted on the basis of faulty forensics does not prove that he was innocent, but it certainly raises doubt about his guilt. Death row exonerations make it statistically likely that executions of innocent people have occurred. Which ones we may never know. Sooner or later it is statistically likely that a clear posthumous exoneration will occur. How will the system react to that occurence?
Charles I agree that there is no definitive proof that Willingham was innocent. However the case does give us an idea of how the system would react to such a case .
What do you think of Bryan Stevenson’s claim I posted that, “For every eight people who have been executed, we’ve identified one innocent person.”?
I think it’s a frightening statistic, and one I was thinking of when I said that it is statistically highly likely that innocent people have been executed. The way Stevenson’s claim is worded is kind of confusing. It could be read to mean that out of eight executed people, one of them has been identified as innocent. As far as I know, to this point no one who was executed has been posthumously exonerated. Grisham, in the novel, does not paint a very encouraging picture of what might happen when there is a posthumous exoneration. Which is why I asked the question at the end of my review.
I read and really enjoyed this novel, on Charles recommendation. The description of solitary confinement/sensory deprivation, and what it did to Donte, is chilling. What struck me in the story that was a bit different from reality, I think, is that Donte Drum was a very innocent man–he had no criminal record, a star on the high school football team–he was the ideal criminal defendant. If Grisham had chosen an innocent defendant with some drug possession charges who had spent a little time in Juvie, community support for him might have been less. I especially enjoyed the story line including the Governor, and how he was involved. Rev. Keith Schroeder’s Bishop seems to behave similarly.