How John Grisham turns real-life cases into courtroom dramas

1. 0:00 – 0:27

   The fear that the next book will flop

   1. JGJohn Grisham0:00

      My big fear in life is I'm gonna write a book one time and, uh, my wife is not gonna like it at all, and my agent and my publisher are gonna really dislike the book. By the time I've gone through the whole process and wr- written 100,000 words, 500 pages, I turn it in, and they say, "This really sucks," okay? [laughs] So, I don't... That's my big fear, and it, it has not happened yet. [upbeat music]

2. 0:27 – 1:32

   Thrown into the deep end: a rookie lawyer’s first murder trial

   1. AGAdam Grant0:27

      John, you started your career as a lawyer. What was your first trial like?

   2. JGJohn Grisham0:30

      My first, uh, murder case, uh, fresh out of law school, and it wasn't a, uh, it wasn't capital murder. It was a self-defense claim. It was a honky-tonk shooting one night, and everything blew up and it was out of control, and there were more guns than you could count, and bullets flying everywhere. But my client had obviously killed another man, and there was a lot of pressure, and I had no business trying that case by myself seven months out of law school, but that's the way it worked in our small county in Mississippi. We had no public defender's office, so the cases were appointed, uh, uh, parceled out by the judges to all the young lawyers. And there I was in court, and I was not prepared for the trial. I thought the trial would, uh, I thought I would be postponed, uh, for another month or so, and the five or six cases ahead of my case suddenly went off on plea bargains. And the

3. 1:32 – 4:33

   Stage fright in court: blank notes, bench rescue, and vomiting

   1. JGJohn Grisham1:32

      jury panel was there, and the judge said, "Okay, you're up next. Uh, pick a jury and let's go," and I had no idea what to do. Made a lot of mistakes. Every mistake a rookie can make. And, uh, the moment came for my, uh, final summation to the jury, the, the big moment, the most dramatic moment in every trial when the lawyer thinks he can convince a jury or he can rescue a bad presentation or whatever, pull all the f- pieces together and, and do a magic trick and win the case. And I got up to address the jury, uh, and I had nothing to say. I had a, I had a legal pad, 'cause you always have to have a legal pad, and there was nothing written on it. [laughs] I had no notes. And I, uh, had this great judge, um, Andy Baker, and he was sort of my mentor, and um, he said, uh, "Mr. Grisham, will you approach the bench?" And I walked over, and he put his hand over the microphone, and he looked at me [laughs] and he said, uh, "You're in trouble, aren't you?" [laughs] I said, "Yes, I'm in trouble." He said, "Do you need to go vomit?" And I said, uh, "I, I don't know, but I've gotta do something. I've gotta, [laughs] I've gotta g-..." He said, "Okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna hold everything right here. There's the door. Go out that door, go downstairs. There's the restroom. Go take care of yourself and hurry back." And I did that, and I v- I vomited.

   2. AGAdam Grant3:04

      [laughs]

   3. JGJohn Grisham3:04

      I was so, uh, uh, upset and nervous, just the butterflies were terrible. And I, uh, f- got through it, and I washed my face off, and I knew the jury was waiting, the courtroom was waiting, the judge was waiting, everybody was waiting. And, uh, I had this really strong urge just to go out the hallway and start running and keep running and not to come back. I really wanted to run and just say, "Forget this case. Forget this profession. I didn't ask for this. I'm gonna do something else with my life." And uh, found the guts to go back in there and address the jury, and, uh, found some words that came together, and after a few minutes, uh, was able to make a presentation off the cuff, and, and the jury found my client not guilty. And it was a big moment, and I learned, uh, a lot about myself through that one terrible incident.

   4. AGAdam Grant4:02

      Wow. Oh, I have so many questions. F- first of all, I, I, I'm getting this image of, of you being a very dutiful, obedient l- young lawyer [laughs] where the judge tells you to go vomit. You're like, "Yes, Your Honor," and then you just go and do it.

   5. JGJohn Grisham4:18

      [laughs] Yeah. Well, I would say it's not unusual. It's, I'm sure it happens, I'm sure it happens all the time because the, the butterflies are horrendous. Your system is really keyed up and, and, and there's a lot of nausea, uh, in those situations.

4. 4:33 – 5:15

   Why he didn’t run: duty to the client and surviving the moment

   1. AGAdam Grant4:33

      So you said you wanted to run, but you didn't. Why not?

   2. JGJohn Grisham4:37

      You can't just leave the courtroom and leave your client. I had a duty to my client. And, uh, at that point, [laughs] my client was not speaking to me. After three days of watching my malpractice in the courtroom, he wanted no part of me. [laughs] He was sitting at the far end of the table, as far away from me as he could get. So we weren't, we weren't speaking. But, you know, uh, ethically, I had a duty. Uh, it would've been, uh, just a really juicy piece of gossip around the courthouse if I had walked out or run out. And, uh, I, you know, managed to pull things together and grit my teeth and go back in there.

5. 5:15 – 6:34

   The dream of being a great trial lawyer—and the seed of A Time to Kill

   1. AGAdam Grant5:15

      Wow. It's easy to imagine you make it through that, "Okay, I'm done. I do not need this again." How did you stick it out another 10 years?

   2. JGJohn Grisham5:24

      Well, I'll tell ya, uh, when the jury came back with a verdict of not guilty and I was able to convince the jury that my client, uh, was acting in self-defense, which he really was, uh, the, the s- the thrill of that win, the, the courtroom victory was so, so enormous for a rookie, and I was driving home from the courthouse, and I was just laughing. I was so relieved to be away from the courtroom. But I just thought, "This is pretty great after all." And I, I was dreaming of being a, a, a big-time trial lawyer. That's what I wanted. And that, that's what l- eventually led to A Time To Kill, because it was based on something I saw in a courtroom, and I, I was inspired to create this story involving a young lawyer, very autobiographical like myself, and a Small town in Mississippi trying the big case, you know, the, with the winning the big courtroom verdict. And so, uh, the dream, you know, continued. Was other, other w- wins in the courtroom, other victories, and a lot of defeats, but, uh, kept, I kept aiming toward that goal of being, um, a, a really hopefully accomplished, uh, courtroom lawyer. That was my dream.

6. 6:34 – 8:37

   What ended the law career: the pull of writing and limited rewards in practice

   1. AGAdam Grant6:34

      So what was it that killed the dream?

   2. JGJohn Grisham6:36

      Writing books. Success as a, as a author. Um, y- about halfway through that 10-year career, and that's not a very long period of time, but, uh, I, I got the urge to at least try to write. Uh, I thought it was gonna be a mystery at first, a courtroom drama, and I started, uh, writing a few words every day. Uh, had the story, and I really believed in the story. I pecked away at it, and before long the book was, you know, I had 300 pages stacked up and I realized I was gonna finish it. And my first novel was published while I was still a lawyer. It didn't sell, um, but I kept writing. I kept writing.

   3. AGAdam Grant7:26

      John, one of the, the interesting things to me about your career transition is you obviously gained a lot of creative freedom, but in a very basic sense, it sounds like you lost some impact. [laughs] You, you shift to, to writing novels, and you're not saving innocent people from a life in prison or from the death penalty anymore. Did you, did you struggle at all with a loss of meaning?

   4. JGJohn Grisham7:49

      It was just not, uh, financially rewa- rewarding, you know. So as a small town lawyer, I just, I just couldn't see myself doing that. And, and the cases I dreamed of getting I didn't get. The big, the big noted, uh, criminal cases or civil cases were not coming my way, and my dream was not going to, uh, happen the way I d- I wanted it to. And Adam, when you, when you get the, when you get the urge to write full time, it's a very powerful dream. Uh, especially when you're, when you're locked into a job that consumes so much time and so much pressure and so much energy and is not that rewarding. I was kinda tired of that. Suddenly to have the freedom or to dream of, of doing nothing but writing books, uh, that was just a huge dream that became all-consuming.

7. 8:37 – 10:22

   A disciplined writing ritual: constraints that create freedom

   1. AGAdam Grant8:37

      You, you have an interesting way of pursuing that dream, [laughs] which is you impose constraints on your own freedom. I think you have one of the more religious writing routines of anyone I know. Would love to hear more about it.

   2. JGJohn Grisham8:49

      Well, I did- I didn't start off, uh, 40 years ago with the, uh, dream or goal of writing 50 books. I think I'm, I'm up to 51 or 52 now. The way I think of it now, and I have for a long time, is I'm blessed with good health, and also, uh, a lot of creative energy. There's a period of time each morning from 7 until about 11 when I'm all alone in my writing room, my little office at home on the farm, uh, with no, uh, nobody else around, no phones, no fax, no internet, no music, no nothing. Um, same desk, same, uh, cup of coffee, s- [laughs] same quilt, same everything. Uh, and I sit down at 7, 7:30, and I st- I st- I'm still very thankful I get to do that and create and write and create these stories that people enjoy. And I can continually see stories involving the law, lawyers, law firms, courts, appeals, cases, uh, litigation. Uh, that's where I like to live. That's, that's my world anyway. I can read a story about a, um, a fascinating, uh, wrongful conviction case or a murder case or some kind of criminal action, and you change a few facts, just change this fact and that factor, whatever, and fictionalize it, and you've got a, what could be a very compelling, uh, mystery, and that's just the way I think all the time.

8. 10:22 – 13:12

   Avoiding rabbit holes: outlining, endings, and leaving room for surprise

   1. AGAdam Grant10:22

      I think one of the things I struggle with as a writer is when I become that disciplined about my writing, I start to force bad ideas, um, and I end up going down rabbit holes, as opposed to saying, you know, I, I really wanna [laughs] I wanna write, um, in a way that's, you know, a little more free-flowing, a little bit less linear, uh, a little bit more imaginative, and I seem to do that better when I have a little bit less structure. And I, I think maybe there's something I'm missing. So [laughs] talk to me about how you maintain this routine and, you know, the goal of, of writing 1,000 or 2,000 words without, without feeling like you box yourself in.

   2. JGJohn Grisham11:04

      Writers are noted for having these brilliant ideas, these great ideas for novels, and you run off and you can't wait to start writing and you hammer away and you write 50,000 words and all of a sudden you stop and you realize you don't know where you're going or you don't know where to end or you've got yourself written into a, boxed into a corner. Writers do that all the time.

   3. AGAdam Grant11:23

      Yeah.

   4. JGJohn Grisham11:24

      I'm not gonna do that. I'm too lazy to waste all that time.

   5. AGAdam Grant11:26

      [laughs]

   6. JGJohn Grisham11:27

      Um, so, so by the time I start, uh, a novel, I've worked on the story for a long time. Very few stories come out of nowhere and hit and stick and become novels. Um, there are a lot of stories, and most of them go away. I, I l- I work on them for a while. I work on the, the... I let them sit for a while, and, and most of them, they're, they're all brilliant when you first get the idea, and the brilliance kind of fades away with almost all of them. The good ones, though, stick around, and I'll continually add to it, work on the outline. What's a great opening? What's an unexpected finish? How do you maintain the narrative tension for 300, 400 pages? Uh, what sh- wh- what's your main character look like? Uh, just don't do a, you know- White boy every time. Uh, that's what I am. Let's try something different. Uh, who, who's the secondary character? You know, all this, all these things that l- y- that are fun to dream up. And, um, so by the time I start, uh, writing, I've got a pretty strong outline of the book written, written down, and I follow that. And, and then, I, again, I learned this with A Time To Kill. If you know where you're going, it's very hard to get lost. And, and having said that, in the course of writing a novel or, or any kind of book, you can't plan everything, and you don't want to because the surprises are always, uh, fun. When s- a new character pops up, or you think of a plot twist or a subplot twist that you hadn't a- anticipated, and suddenly there it is. You can't plan everything. To me, it's still fun, the fun experience of, of writing a novel.

9. 13:12 – 15:04

   When the ending fails: feedback, fear, and fixing The Widow

   1. AGAdam Grant13:12

      So as somebody who begins with the end in mind, I understand you were in for a little bit of a surprise as you were writing your latest book, The Widow.

   2. JGJohn Grisham13:19

      Yeah. Got off track a little bit. I had an ending. Uh, this has happened once or twice in the span of, you know, all these books, but it happened, uh, in January of this year. Uh, I was not sure about the ending. Uh, I knew it was risky. And my wife, uh, she's the first reader. She reads, uh, everything the first time through, and she didn't like the ending. That's a big sign right there. And then my agent, who's also my editor, he didn't like the ending. There, there are times with every, every book where you, when I think, I think this is healthy, where you become very frightened by what you're writing, and you say, "Who wants to r- this story doesn't make any sense. Who wants to read this? This is not plausible." Fiction can be anything you want it to be, but it's gotta be plausible. It's gotta be believable. Um, and you s- you reach a point where you go, "This, you know, I'm terrified by this story. I'm not sure it's gonna work." And you have to, you know, fight off the doubts and keep going, and I've never had so much doubt that I gave up on something I was already working on. I have to, I have to believe in it before I start, and it takes a while to reach that point. To reach the starting point, it takes a long time. To fix the problem, I just kept writing, and I wrote, uh, another ending after the one I thought I had, and it worked. I, I mean, that's part, that's part of the process of doing is being able to fix something. My, my big fear in life is I'm gonna write a book one time, and, uh, my wife is not gonna like it at all, and my agent and my publisher are gonna really dislike the book. By the time I've gone through the whole process and wr- written 100,000 words, 500 pages, I turn it in, and they say, "This really sucks, okay?" [laughs] That's my big fear, and it, it has not happened yet.

10. 15:04 – 18:26

    The psychology of doubt: staying on an even keel

    1. AGAdam Grant15:04

       It's fascinating to hear this, John. I mean, [laughs] you've released more than 50 consecutive number one New York Times bestsellers in a row, and you're still grappling with the fear and doubt along the way of, what if this one sucks?

    2. JGJohn Grisham15:18

       Sure. I think the fear and doubt should always be there with whatever you're doing. You talk about fear and doubt. When you walk into a courtroom, uh, even after years of practice, and you, you've got to select a jury, uh, and you've gotta put the jury in the box and start calling witnesses, and you've gotta be in command of the courtroom or in control of your case, uh, because the outcome could be, uh, it will, will be, will be crucial for s- one side. Uh, that's fear. That's doubt. That's, uh, that was, uh, that's what I, I grew up doing, and I learned it the hard way. Uh, so the, the self-doubt is always, always healthy. It's always... Uh, self-reflection is, uh, is very important.

    3. AGAdam Grant16:09

       In psychology, we often suggest that there's an optimal amount of doubt, that if you get too much, you feel paralyzed by it, and it becomes debilitating. Uh, if you have too little, you might be overconfident or complacent, and there might be a sweet spot in the middle, uh, of that stress curve, where you say, "Okay, I have enough doubt to stay open to different paths and, you know, sort of keep critiquing and improving my work, um, but not so much that I, I just feel like I can't do it, so [laughs] I might as well give up." Do you buy that?

    4. JGJohn Grisham16:44

       I don't... I, even in life, I try to... I don't have a lot of highs. I don't have a lot of lows. I just kinda stay on an even keel. That's just my nature, because I, I, I know writers who are just paralyzed by doubt and cannot, cannot finish. And, and I know writers who have written some really bad stuff because they thought it was brilliant, and it didn't work. We all, we all wanna read good writers, and, um, and I'll read a really good writer, and invariably I'll say, um, you know, "I will never be that good." I just think that you, some things you can't do. Uh, and so I, I recognize my, my limitations. Um, that's, again, that's part of the self-reflection, self, self-analysis that, uh, is just kind of second nature.

    5. AGAdam Grant17:36

       With that level of self-awareness and humility, how do you get to the point where you really believe in an idea? You said it takes a long time. What, what happens along the way?

    6. JGJohn Grisham17:45

       It's a gradual process. Uh, it's fairly easy to create a big hook early in the story. And when you write suspense or mysteries or thrillers, you better have the hook early on in the story. And then the, the ending is tricky because you don't, you don't, you don't want your reader to say, "Okay, I had this book figured out halfway through." You, you want an ending that is, uh, satisfying But not, uh, predictable. And it's gotta be plausible. It's gotta be smart, hopefully. Hopefully [laughs] hopefully. Uh, but it can't be predicted.

11. 18:26 – 22:00

    Swoopers vs. bashers: Grisham’s edit-as-you-go method

    1. AGAdam Grant18:26

       Do, do you know the Vonnegut distinction between swoopers and bashers?

    2. JGJohn Grisham18:30

       Uh, no.

    3. AGAdam Grant18:30

       I- I've never liked the terms, 'cause they're not intuitive. But he, he, the way he described it, swoopers are writers who bang out a first draft, and they create without editing, and then they go back and refine. And bashers do the opposite. They, they try to perfect each sentence before moving on to the next one. Which one is your style?

    4. JGJohn Grisham18:52

       The latter. Uh, I've never hammered out a first draft. Uh, I can't do that. I, um, my goal each day is to write 1,000 words, and sometimes that may take two hours or five hours. Uh, sometimes it may be 2,000. If I get into a situation where there's a lot of dialogue, uh, that goes pretty fast for me. The pages can fly by. So anyway, whatever I write that day, uh, at least 1,000, sometimes more. Uh, when I'm done, I'm done. When I'm done, I've written the last sentence, I don't wanna see it again until the next morning. And when I sit down the next morning, I go back and read what I wrote the day before and, uh, make a lot of edits, clean it up. And reading it, again, we're talking about suspense here. Reading it gets me back into the rhythm of the story. It, it, it, maybe I see a mistake I made the day before, whatever. Uh, now, in between that, the 24 hours in between or 20 hours in between, I get lost in the story. I think about it a lot. I think about the next scene. What am I gonna start writing in the morning? What's the scene gonna be? Uh, and I'm not obsessed with it. It's not work. I'm just thinking about it. It's just fun to ... Uh, when I'm in the car, and I don't drive a lot every day, I never listen to, uh, music or anything. It's total silence, uh, so I can think about what the next scene is and what's the dialogue gonna be. And I'll replay dialogue from that morning, uh, if it doesn't sound right, to make sure it sounds right. So there's, there's, there's the, you know, the constant revision. And so when I finish, um, a book, it's pretty clean. Uh, I've, I've corrected, um, a lot of the mistakes I see. It still needs a good edit, and I still listen to my editor. Uh, but I, I, I've never been able to just plow through a rough draft real fast. I just can't do it.

    5. AGAdam Grant20:50

       Well, you're making me rethink part of my writing process here, listening to you, because I, I've been more in that first swooper camp historically, saying, "Yeah." And I know that creating and critiquing are different mental modes, and if I start to criticize too soon, I can get paralyzed. I can see everything that's wrong with what I'm creating and, and I go too slow, and I, you know, I second-guess myself, and I don't wanna get stuck. That's where writer's block happens. And so I'm just gonna be in drafting mode. It's all idea generation. And then I'll come back later and, you know, put on my, my critic hat and try to make it better. And what I'm realizing as you talk is, although there are benefits of that approach, there's also a cost, which is I am more likely then [laughs] to end up in a rabbit hole. Uh, I, I may, I may then spend weeks, you know, working through something that ultimately is not a compelling direction, and if I had revised along the way, I probably would've caught it sooner and not had to throw away thousands of words of [laughs] of, of garbage that didn't need to be produced in the first place. So I'm now wondering if, if I need a middle ground approach.

12. 22:00 – 23:20

    Lessons from A Time to Kill: rejection, drastic cuts, and efficiency

    1. JGJohn Grisham22:00

       I can't answer that. Uh, I've told you what I do, and, and, uh, everybody, you know, works differently. I'll, I'll, I'll say this. Uh, with [laughs] with my first novel, uh, I worked on it for three years. Uh, I had no idea what I was doing. I'd never written before. And the manuscript for A Time To Kill was almost 1,000 pages long. So it-

    2. AGAdam Grant22:21

       Wow

    3. JGJohn Grisham22:21

       ... got rejected. We talked about that. When I finally found, uh, a publisher and an editor, a really good editor, he cut, or he, we, we cut one third of the book.

    4. AGAdam Grant22:37

       Wow.

    5. JGJohn Grisham22:38

       And, uh, from about 1,000 to about 600 pages. And that one third, as I s- as I, the way I looked at things, was one year of my life, 'cause I'd worked on it for three years.

    6. AGAdam Grant22:50

       Wow.

    7. JGJohn Grisham22:50

       And listen, I was getting up at 5:00 in the morning to be in the office by 5:30 to write for two hours, sometimes three, before the day started, before the phone started ringing. So I was losing a lot of sleep. And I said to myself, "I'm not doing that again. I'm not gonna waste another year of my life by writing too much." But I've learned that over the years. I've learned how to do that over the years, just, you know, write and then s- look for ways to streamline it, make it leaner, make it faster.

13. 23:20 – 27:42

    Lightning round to moral turning point: rethinking the death penalty

    1. AGAdam Grant23:20

       Are you ready for a lightning round?

    2. JGJohn Grisham23:22

       I guess. [laughs]

    3. AGAdam Grant23:22

       First question is, who are your dream dinner party guests, alive or dead?

    4. JGJohn Grisham23:27

       Mark Twain. Uh, I, I loved Mark Twain since I was 12 years old. Uh, Jackie Robinson. I love baseball. Um, Howard Cosell, the famous announcer. Uh, didn't really like him, but I always, uh, wanted to argue with him.

    5. AGAdam Grant23:44

       [laughs]

    6. JGJohn Grisham23:44

       That's enough. That, that's, that's a good dinner party.

    7. AGAdam Grant23:46

       I'd be happy to join that one. What's, what's the worst writing advice you see given regularly?

    8. JGJohn Grisham23:52

       I've heard people say, uh, "Try to write two or three stories at the same time." And I can't ... That, I think that's bad advice. I can't do that. Uh, I've never been able to do that. One at a time.

    9. AGAdam Grant24:04

       What's a question you have for me as a psychologist?

    10. JGJohn Grisham24:07

        It's in April and we, we were, we were in Tuscany, and we all gathered in the, uh, in the den by the fire, and you pulled out a deck of cards and, um- Did some three or four tricks that were truly phenomenal.

    11. AGAdam Grant24:20

        [laughs]

    12. JGJohn Grisham24:20

        Where'd you learn those card tricks? The last card trick was pretty amazing.

    13. AGAdam Grant24:24

        Well, [laughs] thank you. I'm gonna, I'm gonna play this part for my wife, 'cause we have an ongoing-

    14. JGJohn Grisham24:27

        [laughs]

    15. AGAdam Grant24:27

        ... debate about magicians. But, uh, I learned, uh... I, I guess I was mostly self-taught. I, I had some books and some videos, but I watched magicians do tricks that I thought were amazing and tried to figure out how to do them, and started when I was 12, babysitting for some kids down the street, and needed a way to entertain them. What is something you've changed your mind about or re-thought?

    16. JGJohn Grisham24:51

        Well, it's funny you mention that. I, um... This time yesterday, I was, I was on death row in Texas talking to a, a guy named Robert Robertson, who is scheduled to be executed, and I spent a lot of time thinking about, uh, the death penalty. Because I grew up, uh, not in Texas, but in the very conservative Southern Baptist part of the country, the Death Belt, as we say, also known as the Bible Belt, where the death penalty is, uh, still very popular, and I grew up that way. And I, um, had a dramatic change of heart, uh, 30 years ago when I was writing a novel, and it was a big, a big change in my life, because it runs contrary to what I was taught as a child and what most of my, most of my friends believe now. Uh, but it was... I became a very strong opponent of the death penalty.

    17. AGAdam Grant25:44

        Wow. I, I'd love to hear a little more about how you changed your mind on the death penalty. What, what was it that shifted your opinion?

    18. JGJohn Grisham25:53

        Oh, it was a conversation with a chaplain on death row. In Mississippi, in 1994, I was on death row researching a book that would become The Chamber, and I'd been there several times, and I'd, I'd, uh, already knew the guards and some of the inmates, and I lived two hours away and, um, I knew the, um, the executioner. And my last visit there, we were in the, uh, we were next to the, um, death room where the gas chamber was. Uh, there was no execution. Nobody was there but me and the chaplain, and we were sitting in the, uh, holding room where they, where they keep the inmate for the last one hour before he goes through the door and he's executed, and, uh, the chaplain was a retired minister, and he, he was the chaplain of death row. And he said, "Can I ask you a question?" I said, "Sure. Anything." He said, "Are you a Christian?" I said, "I am." He said, "Do you think Jesus would approve of what we do here?" And there was no way to say yes. Jesus taught forgiveness and redemption, not revenge and retribution. And he said, "You're right. This is wrong." And I thought, "Well, that's, that was the 180-degree flip right there." And I drove away from Parchman with a, from the prison with a whole different attitude, a whole different belief.

    19. AGAdam Grant27:18

        Wow. One question completely changed your entire philosophy.

    20. JGJohn Grisham27:22

        Yep.

    21. AGAdam Grant27:23

        Well, it, it tracks with the psychology of motivational interviewing, which suggests that if instead he had said to you, "You know, John, here's why your belief is wrong," that attempt-

    22. JGJohn Grisham27:36

        Right

    23. AGAdam Grant27:36

        ... to shame you might have made you defensive.

    24. JGJohn Grisham27:38

        Right.

    25. AGAdam Grant27:38

        And instead, he invited you to answer the question for yourself.

    26. JGJohn Grisham27:41

        It worked.

14. 27:42 – 34:18

    Activism and arguments: wrongful convictions, system errors, and why abolition is slow

    1. AGAdam Grant27:42

       Wow. That's really powerful. Since you re-thought your stance on the death penalty, um, I think, you know, starting with A Time To Kill, um, but in multiple books, you've, I, I think, using the tools of suspense and mystery and thriller, uh, you've gotten a lot of readers to change their minds, uh, and, you know, wonder why, why does anyone think that the state has the right to decide who lives and who dies, or that a jury should make that call. Um, you serve on the board of directors of the Innocence Project, uh, as well as another organization that's about exonerating the wrongfully convicted. I wonder if that provides some of the meaning that I thought might be absent from your legal career of, you know, both as a writer and as an activist, you're changing policy, you're changing opinion, uh, and you're rescuing innocent people who might lose their lives.

    2. JGJohn Grisham28:30

       I don't start out writing a book hoping to change opinions. Some books, the more serious books, I hope to raise awareness about a certain issue, whether it's, uh, related to criminal justice or environmental destruction or insurance fraud or whatever. But no, the innocence work was something else I stumbled into by accident, because I, uh, I'd already published, uh, probably 20 books, uh, by the time I, um, got the inspiration to write a nonfiction book, something I'd never thought about doing, uh, based on an in- a wrongful conviction case. And it involved a guy in Oklahoma who was almost executed, uh, for a murder committed by a man well-known to the police and should've been the first suspect, and I was just inspired by the story. And once I, uh, jumped into the middle of it and started researching it, uh, I realized how many innocent people are in prison. And so I've, I've written about it. I've written, uh, two nonfiction books about wrongful convictions, one novel about a wrongful conviction. There will be others, I'm sure. And I've said many times, every, every wrongful conviction should be its own book, should have a book, because the stories are so compelling.

    3. AGAdam Grant29:44

       So you've got a, you've got a moral perspective on why the death penalty is wrong. It also sounds like you have a very pragmatic concern, which is there are just too many flaws and holes in our legal system to take the risk of executing an innocent person.

    4. JGJohn Grisham30:00

       Just left death row in Texas, and the most prolific, um, state, uh, in a state that's m- most of the people are quite proud of their, uh, death chamber. In that state, they have sent 18 people to death row convicted by juries unanimously- Uh, 18 people who have later been exonerated because they weren't guilty. That's a lot of mistakes. That's a lot of mistakes. And I believe, I can't prove it because there's no, there's no clear proof, but there's some very strong circumstantial evidence that they have executed, uh, executed several who were innocent, not just in Texas, but around the country. And we as human beings should have proven by now that we can't be trusted to kill people on behalf of the state. Even if you support the death penalty, you cannot support the system of the death penalty. There are just too many mistakes.

    5. AGAdam Grant31:08

       I mean, for me, it's, it's hard to understand why we're still doing this. I, you know, I look at well over 100 countries have abolished the death penalty altogether, almost all of Europe. Uh, some of the countries that still have it, uh, I think most people would consider to be, uh, in other ways, violators of human rights. Why, why, why is this such a slow uphill battle in the US, and what do you think it's gonna take to change it?

    6. JGJohn Grisham31:36

       The death penalty is dying, uh, a slow death itself. Um, there are fewer executions, fewer death verdicts, not because of courageous, uh, lawmakers or courageous judges, uh, but because of courageous jurors. Defense lawyers are better, and jurors are now, uh, allowed to see more of the defendant's, uh, life and past. And so, uh, most of these people are guilty. Most of them are. The crimes are atrocious, horrendous, beyond description, many of them are. Um, and there's always the urge to get immediate, you know, revenge. But when you learn more about the defendant and the fact that he never had a chance in life, never had a family, never had whatever, the things that most of us have, um, he fell through the cracks time and time again through the systems. Um, juries have more sympathy these days. They are saying more and more often, "Let's don't kill him. Let's just keep him in prison where he belongs." And that's what's happening. And, uh, so you're seeing fewer, uh, executions. Uh, the, the number of executions has really, um, decreased. Now, that could turn around given the current mood, uh, in our country and the, uh, full-throated support of the death penalty by our president, who wants to execute a lot of people, and that will filter down to, you know, his supporters and, you know, throughout society. Um, um, we don't know what that's gonna do to, to the death penalty, but it can't be good.

    7. AGAdam Grant33:35

       From all the years you've spent working on this, what has been the most effective argument for you?

    8. JGJohn Grisham33:39

       It's very simple. We can all agree that, uh, killing is wrong, so why do we allow the state to kill? We are the state. We're part of the state, and we, uh, we tolerate it. We allow it. It's still wrong.

    9. AGAdam Grant33:58

       Hard to argue with that.

    10. JGJohn Grisham33:59

        I've got to run. We ought to... We, we're, we're, our hour is up.

    11. AGAdam Grant34:03

        We're out of time.

    12. JGJohn Grisham34:03

        Okay.

    13. AGAdam Grant34:04

        Thank you, John.

    14. JGJohn Grisham34:05

        Thank you, Adam. Great seeing you again. See you down the road. Take care. [upbeat music]

Episode duration: 34:28