Biblical Justice Requires Strong Rules of Evidence

One hundred years ago, the legendary jurist Learned Hand dismissed the idea that the American criminal justice system, with all its procedural protections, could convict an innocent person. As he put it, “Our procedure has been always haunted by the ghost of the innocent man convicted. It is an unreal dream.”

Today, we know that what Hand dismissed is too often a real-life nightmare. Since forensic DNA technology was first used in 1989 to overturn a criminal conviction in the U.S., around 3,600 people have been exonerated after convictions for crimes they didn’t commit. On average, an exonerated person spends nine years in prison before his or her innocence is discovered. Many languish for decades. One woman released in 2024 was wrongly imprisoned for 43 years. A man released in 2021 also spent 43 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit.

In Framed: Astonishing True Stories of Wrongful Convictions, best-selling author John Grisham partners with Jim McCloskey, a graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary and former head of Centurion Ministries, to tell the true stories of 10 false convictions. Grisham, a lifelong Baptist, is mostly known for his fictional legal thrillers. But in 2006, he released his first nonfiction book, The Innocent Man, in which he recounted the wrongful conviction and near execution of Ron Williamson.

The tales they recount are both gripping and infuriating. Their thesis is that, for the most part, wrongful convictions aren’t unfortunate accidents but rather the entirely predictable, if not intended, product of “abusive tactics used by the authorities.” As a result, “if we as a society had the political gumption to change unfair laws, practices, and procedures, we could avoid virtually all wrongful convictions” (xii).

Different Stories, Common Culprits

Grisham and McCloskey take turns recounting the stories of 10 prosecutions gone bad. For those who’ve studied wrongful convictions, the causes are entirely unsurprising. It’s things like junk forensic science, unreliable eyewitness identifications, coercive interrogations leading to false confessions, jailhouse informants who perjure themselves, and prosecutors who conceal exculpatory evidence. These problems are commonly recognized.

In 2009, the National Academy of Sciences released a report from a blue-ribbon panel of experts on the use of forensic scientific evidence. While supposed experts testifying for the prosecution on blood spatter patterns, firearms ballistics matching, bite-mark identification, hair-fiber analysis, and myriad other topics are widespread, the National Academy panel concluded the evidence is mostly unreliable garbage with no sound scientific basis.

Similarly, scientific studies have raised serious questions about witnesses’ ability to reliably identify total strangers, especially when the identifications are cross-racial. Of the first 250 people exonerated by DNA, 76 percent were convicted based on eyewitness identifications. One was identified at trial by six witnesses whom we now know to a certainty were all wrong.

Furthermore, after lengthy and grueling police interrogations, it’s common for people to sign detailed confessions to crimes they didn’t commit. Eight percent of exonerations involved testimony from jailhouse snitches who claimed cellmates confessed to the crimes. And about 60 percent of exonerations involved official misconduct, usually police or prosecutors hiding evidence of the defendant’s innocence.

The vivid examples in Framed illustrate how these evidentiary problems lead to wrongful convictions. Many injustices could be avoided if we had the political will to ban the evidence and tactics that cause the justice system to misfire.

Due Process Is Biblical

What’s especially noteworthy about the stories told in Framed—but, again, not surprising to those who study exonerations—is the lack of accountability for the police and prosecutors responsible for the wrongful convictions. They weren’t criminally prosecuted, disciplined by the state bars that license and regulate attorneys, or even fired from their jobs. And the U.S. Supreme Court invented out of thin air the doctrine of “absolute immunity” that insulates prosecutors from federal civil rights lawsuits for violating a criminal defendant’s constitutional rights, even if that violation was intentional and resulted in the conviction of an innocent person. Official wrongdoers are, in fact, above the law.

This is impossible to square with the concept behind Scripture’s teaching about punishing false witnesses (Deut. 19:16–21). Writing in the second century, Irenaeus of Lyon understood Christian teaching to require punishment for government officials when they abused their power to accomplish such injustice. As he put it in Against Heresies, “Whatsoever [the magistrates] do to the subversion of justice, iniquitously, and impiously, and illegally, and tyrannically, in these things shall they also perish.” Today, they may not even lose their jobs.

At the same time, it’s worth noting that, in the United States, false convictions typically happen with the concurrence of juries who find proof beyond a reasonable doubt based on the flimsiest evidence. We tend to think of the requirement of proof beyond a reasonable doubt as designed to protect the accused. But its theological origin was as a means to protect jurors’ souls from the sin of convicting an innocent person. If jurors today felt more fear for their souls when they pass judgment on others, they might insist on compelling proof rather than deferring to prosecutorial judgment.

Remember Those in Prison

This book is part of a broader effort to bring to light the plight of wrongful convicts, which is facilitated by organizations like the Innocence Project and Centurion Ministries. Grisham sits on the boards of both organizations. Though the Innocence Project is the better known of the two, Centurion Ministries (founded in 1983 by McCloskey) was the first organization devoted to the exoneration of the wrongly convicted.

Framed also stands as a warning to church members and leaders. One of the most heartrending stories in the book is of Joe Bryan, who was banished from his Baptist church’s worship services while awaiting trial because other church members were uncomfortable with his presence in the pews. The pastor, rather than standing up for due process, caved to the congregants and called Joe to request he stay away. That brother in Christ, whose presence they couldn’t endure in worship, was wrongfully convicted and served 34 years in a Texas prison for a murder he didn’t commit. But, due to God’s preserving grace, he never lost his faith. Joe is out of prison today, and McCloskey recounts,

[Joe] still prays and reads Scripture every day, same as in prison. Always the teacher, he leads Bible study groups, same as in prison. He will even play the piano for the choir, if asked, same as in prison. He survived hell behind bars because of the strength he found in his faith. God protected him, as he knew He would. And Joe has long since forgiven those responsible for his persecution. (210)

Framed makes for engaging reading for a general audience. We would do well to “remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them” (Heb. 13:3). Some might have been framed.

A review of 'Framed' by John Grisham and Jim McCloskey, available now wherever books are sold.

Matt Martens is a defense lawyer, a former federal prosecutor, a seminary graduate, and the author of Reforming Criminal Justice: A Christian Proposal. Matt is a member of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC.