Author and lawyer John Grisham attended the Santa Fe Literary Festival where he gave a speech claiming ‘white people love the death penalty’ but ‘Black people know the truth’.
Grisham spoke about criminal justice in America and the racial divide during the event on Monday, 20 May.
Speaking to his friend and bestselling writer Hampton Sides, he stated that there are 'tens of thousands of innocent people in prison and you don’t believe it because you’re white, Black people know the truth', a statement which prompted an applause from the audience.
He added: "It’s pretty easy to send an innocent person to prison. It’s almost impossible to get them out.”
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Elsewhere in his speech, Grisham described his experience visiting America’s infamously brutal death row for research, where he found a room for condemned prisoners to sit and talk with a chaplain during the hour before they were set to be executed.
Grisham confessed to the audience that he hadn’t been totally against the death penalty before a chaplain reminded him that Jesus would not approve of such fatal punishments.
The chaplain said: “We all agree that killing is wrong, so why should the state be able to kill?”, prompting the moment the author 'switched' his opinion and 'never looked back'.
Grisham also spoke about his involvement with the The Innocence Project, a criminal justice non-profit organisation whereby 275 people had been acquitted of their supposed crimes because of the charity’s work.
Sides continued the conversation by asking him if he had begun working on his next book, to which Grisham replied: “There’s one book I want to write about Vietnam. As I grew older, I met people who went, and met families whose sons didn’t come home, and I just wondered: How could this happen to this country?"
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Although he isn’t currently working on the book, he was most certainly considering doing so.
This is the first year of the Santa Fe Literary festival which took place at the Santa Fe Community Convention Centre from 20 May until 23 May. It is said to showcase authors and notable figures in thought-provoking discussions such as the one with Grisham, as well as being an opportunity for festival-goers to become inspired by the conversations.
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