Bestselling writer John Grisham comes to UNC for lecture about innocence

John Grisham is quick with a joke. Married to a UNC graduate and with a daughter who graduated in 2008, he said he is already tired of basketball this season. Teased about wearing a suit, he quipped that he still dresses like a lawyer, years after changing professions. 

But what he writes about is anything but lighthearted. Grisham writes nearly one book a year and the majority fall under the genre of legal thrillers. His topics include homelessness, the death penalty and wrongful incarceration — the seriousness of which is surprising, given that his two grandchildren refer to him as “G.” 

Grisham was the lecturer at this year’s Eve Marie Carson Lecture Series. He spoke about his involvement in the Innocence Project, a non-profit that works to exonerate the wrongly convicted, and his passion for rights for those people. Judicial reform was not always on his radar, though. 

“It’s really odd because I’d been a lawyer for 10 years and I never thought about the wrongfully convicted,” Grisham said. “I’d written 10 books, maybe more, about the legal system, before I finally woke up one day and saw these stories about these high-profile DNA exonerations.”

One of these stories inspired “The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town,” Grisham’s only nonfiction novel, which was recently adapted into a Netflix series. He discovered the story while reading the obituaries — he came across a man named Ronald Keith Williamson who was wrongfully convicted of a murder, sentenced to death and exonerated once further evidence came to light. 

Grisham said one thing that struck him about the case was his personal connection to Williamson. They both came from small towns in the South and aspired to play professional baseball, but Williamson’s story changed when mental illness made him perceived as the “town bum.” An unfair trial with insufficient evidence led to Williamson’s wrongful conviction and sentencing to death row. 

He has not returned to nonfiction since, partially because he said he would rather avoid the lawsuits. Still, he said every wrongful conviction is a great story because it elicits deep human emotions of the frustration that comes with serving time for someone else’s crime. 

When it comes to judicial corruption, Grisham said he can think of three things that would bring about positive reform: abolishing the death penalty, decriminalizing drugs and doing away with judicial elections in states.  

“It’s easy to send an innocent person to jail,” Grisham said. “It’s almost impossible to get them out.” 

In his fiction work and legal thrillers, Grisham also weaves issues he is passionate about into the plot. He said he has discussed issues such as the death penalty, insurance fraud abuse and environmental destruction to create compelling stories. 

Daniel Wallace, a writer and UNC distinguished professor of creative writing, joined Grisham onstage for an interview after the lecture. Wallace has gotten six novels published in his career and emphasized the unusual volume of Grisham’s more than 20. Wallace is currently working on nonfiction work about murder. 

“That stuff sells,” Grisham said. 

Grisham starts a novel on Jan. 1 every year and gives himself six months to write it. He said he has only once struggled to finish a book, when he could not manage to kill a character in “The Chamber.” He and his wife, Renee, frequently discussed how to kill him until the book was finally finished. 

Shea Linden, Grisham’s daughter, said she knew about her father’s literary works growing up, but the family did not treat it differently from any other career. Grisham was once the bestselling writer in the world until J.K. Rowling outsold him. 

“And as we joked in the Grisham household, that little wizard, Harry Potter, gave everyone a run for their money,” Linden said. 

Nine of Grisham’s books have been adapted into films and he remains one of just three writers who have sold two million copies of a book on its first printing. Still, he said the work he does for the Innocence Project is some of the most rewarding work he has done. One of his goals for the lecture was to communicate the issues of wrongful conviction to students. 

“There are far too many innocent people in prison and young people need to know that,” Grisham said. “Young people need to question the system to try to fix it.” 

arts@dailytarheel.com