Prolific author John Grisham has written a nonfiction collection about wrongful convictions, and it looks likely to join his oeuvre of legal thriller novels as another bestseller.
But the New York Times and ProPublica now say Grisham went too far in his use of their reporting on a murder case in Texas, and they want changes made to the book.
The Times says Grisham’s book “draws comprehensively and without appropriate attribution” from “Blood Will Tell,” a two-part series written by prominent criminal justice reporter Pamela Colloff in 2018. Colloff, who works jointly for the Times and ProPublica, reported on the disputed conviction of Joe Bryan, who was found guilty of his wife’s 1985 murder despite evidence suggesting he was 120 miles away when it took place.
Grisham wrote “Framed” with co-author Jim McCloskey, whose Centurion Ministries organization has worked for decades to overturn wrongful convictions. Each author wrote separate chapters, with McCloskey focusing on cases he worked on while Grisham recounted stories of other convictions based on previously published reporting by others.
In a statement to The Washington Post, Grisham pointed to the book’s eight pages of source notes.
“I clearly state that while Jim McCloskey has lived with these cases over the course of his remarkable life’s work at Centurion, I did not live these stories,” Grisham said in his statement. “I read about them, via newspaper and magazine articles, books, legal briefs, court opinions, and documentaries. And I have fully acknowledged and credited all of my sources for each and every chapter in ‘Framed.’ While the facts of any case are irrefutable and unchangeable regardless of form, the writing in ‘Framed’ is my own. To claim otherwise is simply and patently untrue.”
In the book’s acknowledgments, Grisham mentions reporters (including Colloff) by name. But Grisham’s use of Colloff’s work goes far beyond usual professional practices, according to the Times and ProPublica, with his writing veering close to Colloff’s in dozens of instances.
For example, in her 2018 series, Colloff writes of Bryan’s wife: “Her pink nightgown was drawn up to the top of her thighs, and she was naked from the waist down.”
Grisham’s version is reworded only slightly, swapping the two clauses: “She was naked from the waist down and her pink nightgown was pulled up to her thighs.”
In another paragraph, about a flashlight that became a key piece of evidence, Colloff writes: “The specks on the flashlight lens were human blood, type O – the same blood type as Mickey’s, but not Joe’s.”
Grisham writes: “The specks on the flashlight lens were human blood type O, same as Mickey’s but not Joe’s.”
In an interview with The Post, ProPublica Editor in Chief Stephen Engelberg said his outlet had found more than 50 examples of close similarities between Colloff’s articles and Grisham’s writing. Engelberg pointed out that Colloff’s credit in the book comes after more than 300 pages, and says she should instead be mentioned at the start of the chapter on Bryan.
“I about fell out of my chair when I read [Grisham’s] statement,” Engelberg said of the author’s blanket denial of wrongdoing.
Both ProPublica and the Times said in statements to The Post that they want changes made to “Framed” to better credit Colloff.
“We are in conversation with the publisher to correct this very concerning oversight and ensure the original work receives appropriate credit,” ProPublica said in its statement.
The similarities between Colloff’s series and Grisham’s writing were first noted publicly by Maurice Chammah, a criminal justice reporter for the Marshall Project who reviewed “Framed” for the Times.
Chammah wrote “Grisham relies so heavily on Pamela Colloff’s 2018 reporting” that “simply mentioning her work in a note at the end does not feel adequate.”
Chammah said Grisham’s use of Colloff’s series is especially notable because reporting on apparent wrongful convictions can require years of painstaking investigation.
“We all know how much work it is to do this reporting, to gather those tens of thousands of pages of records and run down sources,” Chammah said in an interview. “Seeing the work used this way stings a little more, because you know how much work it was to get those details in the first place.”
Grisham, a former criminal defense lawyer, has been a longtime financial supporter of legal fights over alleged wrongful convictions. He sits on the board of both McCloskey’s organization and the Innocence Project.
Grisham was also involved in attempts to win Bryan’s release from prison after the publication of Colloff’s article, joining calls to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles. In 2019 Grisham published “The Guardians,” a novel that combined details from Bryan’s case and McCloskey’s legal work.
Bryan was released from prison on parole in 2020, and died last month. According to the website of the Innocence Project of Texas, “all current legal avenues to prove Joe’s innocence have been exhausted.”
The writing and structure of some of Grisham’s other chapters hew closely to the work of other published articles, including a 2009 article for the New Yorker by writer David Grann (the article is cited among Grisham’s sources). Grann’s article, “Trial by Fire,” recounts the story of Cameron Todd Willingham, a Texas man who was executed in 2004 after being convicted of killing his three daughters through arson; the story is widely cited as an example of an innocent man who was put to death.
For example, Grann writes in one section about an investigator: “Vasquez was now convinced that Willingham had killed his children. If the floor had been soaked with a liquid accelerant and the fire had burned low, as the evidence suggested, Willingham could not have run out of the house the way he had described without badly burning his feet. A medical report indicated that his feet had been unscathed.”
Grisham writes: “That was the clincher. Vasquez knew then that Todd had killed his children. If the floor had been soaked with accelerant, as they believed, Todd could not have escaped without burning his feet. His medical exam that day revealed no injuries to his bare feet.”
Grisham lists Grann in his acknowledgments. Grann, who in a blurb for “Framed” praised its “astonishing power,” declined to comment.
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