John Grisham on the Wrongly Convicted: “It's Not That Hard to Convict an Innocent Person”

What happened to Army veterans Mark Jones, Dominic Lucci and Kenny Gardiner on a January night in 1992 is hard to believe. “It just takes you by surprise,” Lucci said.

“They are stunned and in shock,” Jones said.

Gardiner said, “One day you're preparing to go before the promotion board, the next day you're fighting for your freedom.”

A chance encounter with a Savannah, Georgia, police officer investigating a murder cost each of them 26 years in prison for a crime they didn't commit. “Why us? Then why?” said Lucci. “We had nothing in our lives that would make anyone even think that. There is no logical reason for us to have done any of this.”

Her arrest, conviction and fight for freedom are as dramatic as the plot of any crime thriller, says bestselling author John Grisham, who has written almost 50 of them. “It’s all there: drama, suffering, injustice, you name it,” Grisham said.

The story of the Savannah 3 is one of 10 cases described in Grisham's new book, “Framed,” which he co-wrote with Jim McCloskey, founder of Centurion, one of the country's first nonprofits to advocate for the release wrongfully convicted person. The cases they write about are not outliers; In fact, Grisham said, they are “the tip of the iceberg. There are hundreds of these cases, maybe thousands.”

It is only the second nonfiction book by Grisham, a former lawyer who sits on Centurion's board. When asked about the harrowing emotions of these stories, he said: “We can't begin to believe that someone could sit on death row for 20 years and then get out and be able to function. And I've met so many of these guys.” They've endured something over the years that the rest of us can't even begin to understand.

As for the book title “Framed,” who does the framing? “The police and the prosecutors,” McCloskey said. “The police force witnesses to give false statements. Prosecutors hide exculpatory evidence from the defendant. This goes on and on.”

The walls of Centurion's Princeton, New Jersey, office are lined with some of these customers' faces, and the numbers are troubling, according to Grisham and McCloskey. Nationwide, 3,600 people have been exonerated since 1989; 68 percent are people of color.

“Racism is a big factor,” Grisham said.

“If you are a person of color and indigent, you have an uphill battle ahead of you because you have no resources to fight this wrongful conviction,” McCloskey said.

And most of those wrongly convicted – as the cases of Kenny Gardiner, Mark Jones and Dominic Lucci show – were simply unlucky.

On January 31, 1992, the three soldiers, then in their early twenties, were together at a wedding rehearsal, the day before Jones was to be married. “Everything in my life finally really connected and came together,” he said.

After dinner, the three soldiers drove 45 miles to a nightclub in Savannah for an impromptu bachelor party. Lucci said: “We were trying to get into a strip club that wouldn't let us in because (Mark's) birthday was still three months away. So we went to another one. We had no idea how to get there.”

They stopped three times to ask police officers for directions, unaware that there had been a drive-by shooting nearby and that they were about to encounter the only eyewitness.

Lucci said: “We asked the police officer who was walking across the street with a gentleman in a suit where the bar was. She said, 'It's right there.' We assumed the guy in the suit was a detective. He was the eyewitness who told her, “That kind of looked like the car.”

Shortly afterwards, the police took the three men in for questioning. Hours later they were arrested for murder.

None of them had a criminal history. None of them knew the victim. And no weapon was found in her car. “No weapon was found anywhere; still no weapon has been found,” Lucci said.

There was, Jones said, nothing to link her to the shooting. So how did not only the arrest but also the conviction come about? “Wrong place, wrong time,” he said.

In addition, according to McCloskey, there were race riots in Savannah and the murder of a black man, which was blamed on three white men, had the city in turmoil. “They filed a lawsuit against them to show the black leadership that they care about the black victims just as much as they care about the white ones,” McCloskey said. “And these three innocent soldiers fell into their hands and went away.”

At the trial, eyewitness James White identified two of the men as the shooters. Other witnesses and prosecutors portrayed them as racists and thrill seekers. The jury was absent for eight hours and 20 minutes before returning the guilty verdict on charges of first-degree murder and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony.

“I literally almost fainted because I was so shocked,” Gardiner said.

They were sentenced to life in prison plus five years. Lucci asked, “Does this mean that I have to serve a life sentence and if I die in prison, you will keep my body for five more years before giving it to my family?” I don’t understand what’s going on!”

Lucci wrote letter after letter to Centurion, which only accepts one or two new cases a year. But in 2009, McCloskey and his team took over the case.

It still took years for justice to be achieved. Even after James White admitted that he had lied about identification at trial, the men remained in prison until December 20, 2017. The Georgia Supreme Court ruled that the state's failure to present a key piece of evidence to the defense at the original trial unintentionally violated the law. Lucci, Gardiner and Jones were finally free.

“It was a moment that gives you goosebumps,” McCloskey said. “You can't believe it's actually happening and you're so happy for the families and mothers that they're bringing their sons home.”

Kenny Gardiner now lives in Texas and rents a room in a house where Mark Jones lives with his mother. Both have jobs as pizza delivery people. Dominic Lucci moved to Ohio, where he works as a telephone operator at the VA hospital. The three men, now in their fifties, are still best friends.

Although the Georgia Legislature granted all three men some compensation, they can never get back what they lost.

“Think about what you did from the time you were 21 to the time you were 47 and lose everything — your college, your marriage, your house,” Gardiner said.

“Your children are born,” Lucci added.

“No professional history. 26 years of Social Security not taken into account,” Gardiner said.

And they can't completely get rid of the past. They admit to still having nightmares. And when asked if they have a hard time trusting people, Lucci laughed: “I don’t trust anyone! As far as it goes, family is part of it, and (Kenny and Mark) are part of family.”

These men are actually the lucky ones, says John Grisham. There are countless others still waiting to be heard: “We're trying to bring attention to these cases and show people that these cases happen all the time. It is not that difficult to convict an innocent person; “It's virtually impossible to get them released.”

READ AN EXCERPT: “Framed” by John Grisham and Jim McCloskey

EDITOR'S NOTE: In response to questions about John Grisham's reliance on others' reporting on Framed, the Sunday Morning writer provided the following statement:

“I have long been obsessed with stories of wrongful conviction, a theme that has featured in many of my novels and non-fiction books over the past thirty years. I am also an outspoken advocate for criminal justice reform and serve on the boards of The Innocence Project and Centurion Ministries.

“There are a total of eight pages of source notes in 'Framed.'” I state clearly that Jim McCloskey has lived with these cases throughout his remarkable life's work at Centurion; Magazine articles, books, legal briefs, court reports, etc. but I have not seen documentaries.

“And I have fully acknowledged and cited all of my sources for each and every chapter in 'Framed.'” While the facts in each case are irrefutable and immutable regardless of form, the text in “Framed” is my own. To claim otherwise is simply and patently untrue.”

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The story was produced by Michelle Kessel. Editor: Ed Givnish.

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