John Grisham is being unfairly pilloried

[mainer]

Last edited Fri Oct 17, 2014, 09:16 PM - Edit history (1)

Grisham is a decent man, a longterm Democrat and member of the Innocence Project who has fought for justice for all. There's something disturbingly Tea Party-ish about the delight I hear from people who are now burning him at the stake.

Grisham certainly could have chosen his words better. But he isn’t wrong, and the invective he’s receiving right now is both misinformed and wildly over the top. There are Twitter users calling him a pervert, or for his home to be raided by the FBI. It isn’t all that different than suggesting that people who criticize the drug laws must be doing or selling drugs.

Take this quote out of context, and one could make Grisham look like he thinks the biggest problem with the criminal justice system is that old white guys are getting locked up for looking at child porn. But context is important. Grisham has spent a great deal of time, money, and influence advocating for criminal justice reform. He helped found the Mississippi Innocence Project, and sits on the board of directors for the Innocence Project in New York. He wrote a nonfiction book about a wrongful conviction, and helped another get published. He testified before Congress about the need for reforming the forensics system, addressing the problems he’s seen firsthand in Mississippi.

Note also that Grisham’s discussion with the Telegraph reporter began with a more general discussion of overcriminalization, including the disproportionate and racially biased drug sentencing laws. Here is Grisham talking about race and the criminal justice system with the American Bar Association:

Grisham said he is troubled by the continuing effect that race has on the fundamental fairness of the judicial system. The cynical enforcement of the death penalty portrayed in “The Confession” is based on several different Texas death penalty cases. But while the problems of racism may have become more nuanced, he says, the problem of unequal justice is fundamentally the same as it was for Tom Robinson, whose fictional Depression-era trial was portrayed in “To Kill A Mockingbird.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/10/16/in-defense-of-john-grisham/

[Kalidurga]

1. No he isn't

he has this fictional set up were a drunk guy accidently finds child porn and accidently downloads three files of porn and accidently sends it to other perverts.

[samsingh]

2. that's a tough one

child porn is wrong

[arthritisR_US]

8. I could be wrong but my impression is that he sees it as a

victimless crime, which it bloody well is not. He appears to empathize with the perpetrator but fails to empathize with the children being forced into such acts. He also fails to see the psychological disease at play with the perpetrators which run the gamut from pedophile to sociopath. Having worked with the two groups the success rate is near zero. I think his empathy is misplaced.

[mainer]

12. He did not say that at all.

You see, this is the problem in America. People DON'T READ and make up their own interpretations, and do things like start wars in Iraq because of ignorance.

[EvolveOrConvolve]

39. Here's the exact quote in context

While you're correct in that he doesn't call it a victimless crime, when I parse Grisham's statement I think the implication is being made. He definitely seems to think that consumers are less culpable than producers, which isn't how our justice system works. The punishment for aiding or soliciting a crime is generally the same for the commitment of the crime.

We have prisons now filled with guys my age. Sixty-year-old white men in prison who've never harmed anybody, would never touch a child. But they got online one night and started surfing around, probably had too much to drink or whatever, and pushed the wrong buttons, went too far and got into child porn.

...

His drinking was out of control, and he went to a website. It was labelled 'sixteen year old wannabee hookers or something like that'. And it said '16-year-old girls'. So he went there. Downloaded some stuff - it was 16 year old girls who looked 30. He shouldn't ’a done it. It was stupid, but it wasn't 10-year-old boys. He didn't touch anything. And God, a week later there was a knock on the door: ‘FBI!’ and it was sting set up by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to catch people - sex offenders - and he went to prison for three years.

There's so many of them now. There's so many 'sex offenders' - that's what they're called - that they put them in the same prison. Like they're a bunch of perverts, or something; thousands of ’em. We've gone nuts with this incarceration. But so many of these guys do not deserve harsh prison sentences, and that's what they're getting.

[samsingh]

38. that's the key point

if it was a fictional story or cartoon characters I would still find it repugnant but it would be different than pictures that had real victims.

Child porn is wrong.

[arthritisR_US]

40. That to me is what he fails to appreciate. nt

[shenmue]

3. Sorry, can't agree with OP

It is one thing to look at porn with adults in it. Any porn with underage people, however, is by definition a non-consensual sex act. We can have zero patience for people who don't see it's wrong.

[mainer]

4. So you agree that viewing child porn deserves the same penalty as rape?

And that everyone serving in US's prisons belongs there, and that we don't over-incarcerate Americans?

That's the primary message Grisham was saying.

[shenmue]

5. Child porn is rape

What the hell is wrong with you?

We may over-incarcerate for some things, but not this.

[mainer]

7. No, viewing child porn is not the same as physically raping someone

yet they receive the same jail sentence.

What the hell is wrong with YOU?

Ironically enough, the 60-ish friend he talked about served time in jail for viewing a website with "16-year-old girls" who posed for the pictures on behalf of the RCMP in a sting operation. Should the RCMP be thrown in jail for actually photographing them?

[arthritisR_US]

9. Some of the child porn actually involves rape and these are the ones that bring

in the most money.

[mainer]

10. So a man who views 16-year-olds online in Canada

should get the same sentence as someone who rapes a child? You're OK with that?

btw, the age of consent in Canada is 16. So it's legal to have sex with a 16-year-old there, but viewing them online means going to jail for 3 years.

You're hunky dory with that?

That was Grisham's point. The law is screwed up.

[arthritisR_US]

14. I answered you just below but will now address some other things you said which

I'm being enlightened about.

I was aware of 16 being the age of consent here but didn't know that viewing them online is a 3 year sentence...that's fecked up. It would seem the laws in both our country's is fecked and really should be addressed.

[arthritisR_US]

11. On the RCMP and the 16 year olds....

the RCMP are being hypocrites and no better. They could have easily found really young looking 18 year olds to do the same thing. I think they were wrong but you will never find them behind bars for it, IMO.

[uppityperson]

17. "viewing (statutory rape) is not the same as physically raping someone"

[mainer]

20. Viewing 16-year-old girls is not the same as rape

especially in Canada where the age of consent is 16.

And no, those girls were not being raped. They were posed by the RCMP to look like hookers.

[uppityperson]

23. I guess I view "child porn" as being under the age of consent, hence statutory rape.

[mainer]

26. Here's the problem. Girls don't have their true ages stamped on their foreheads.

You could inadvertently look at a 16-year-old and believe she's 18.


As the Washington Post article said:

In 1986, it was revealed that several movies featuring the popular porn actress Traci Lords were filmed while Lords was underage. The federal government proceeded to prosecute the people who made those movies for not verifying Lords’ age. That was probably appropriate. But should federal prosecutors also have pursued charges against everyone they could prove had at one time watched those movies, even if they did so believing that Lords was of age? Should those viewers have gone to prison for three or five or 20 years?

[pnwmom]

13. You are putting words in the poster's mouth.

Viewing child porn isn't exactly the same crime so doesn't necessarily deserve the same exact penalty. However, the viewers create the market that the rapists sell to. You are ignoring that fact.

[mainer]

15. Grisham said specifically that the penalties should not be the same

but everyone here thinks he's saying: "Oh, child porn is OK!" and he's being attacked due to this misinterpretation.

[pnwmom]

22. What they're objecting to is this:

“We have prisons now filled with guys my age. Sixty-year-old white men in prison who’ve never harmed anybody, would never touch a child,” he said in an exclusive interview to promote his latest novel Gray Mountain which is published next week.

“But they got online one night and started surfing around, probably had too much to drink or whatever, and pushed the wrong buttons, went too far and got into child porn.”

I don't think the penalty should be the same for rape, but I strongly disagree with Grisham's statement here. It is not true that a regular viewer of child porn has never harmed anybody. He's helped create the market for a product that hurts children. And who gets prosecuted for a single instance of accidentally wandering onto a porn site? When have you ever heard of that happening?

[mainer]

24. I think people who work for the Innocence Project

see a lot of things like that happening.

"When have you ever heard of that happening?"

Unless you're in the legal profession, how would you hear about it?

[pnwmom]

25. For a single porn image? I've heard of lots of cases of men prosecuted because they found

hundreds or thousands of images of child porn on their computers, but not a single case involving only one image. And I'm sure their attorneys would have raised holy hell if that had been the case.

Any attorney with a client who was being sent to prison for a single image would have gone to the press to argue that it was a horrible mistake. With a single image it might have been (though I don't know why it would have been downloaded).

[mainer]

28. Make that client poor or African American, and guess what?

You'd never hear about it. And he would be in jail.

[pnwmom]

36. Grisham's worried about white men that this happens to.n/t

[Brickbat]

6. ROFLMAO.

"Burning at the stake"? Please.

[joeybee12]

16. Nobody should be commenting on this if they haven't read the book...

I haven't, so my lips are sealed.

[Comrade Grumpy]

18. Subjects like this cannot be discussed rationally on this board.

And there's a certain contingent quite willing to censor opinions they don't like, without regard to the TOS.

[joshcryer]

30. It's a difficult subject anywhere.

There is a special on PBS about a young man who tried to create a support group for people like him, very sad all around.

John did say something silly though about drunk dudes "finding" it, that crap is on the dark net. Doug Stanhope makes a great joke about that.

Very NSFW:

John is in denial about his friend.

[Scootaloo]

19. I think he COULD have had a valid point, and destroyed it with a horrid example

It is possible to have child porn on your hard drive unwillingly, or unknowingly; Say for instance you go to a discussion board site, and some troll has posted that sort of content on a thread you go to; those images get downloaded to your computer, whether you like it or not. You're not right-click saving them (one hopes), but just by clicking the link, you browser has downloaded and loaded them, and they are sitting in a cache somewhere on your hard drive.

But instead of that, he went with some guy drunk-searching for kiddie rape. Which is not just a bad example, but is a self-defeating one. The law holds you responsible for allactions you take, sober or not

[mainer]

21. It was not kiddie rape. It was "16-year-olds who look like hookers"

and it was a fake site posted by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. In Canada, where the legal age of consent is sixteen.

[pnwmom]

27. But Grisham spoke in generalities, defending these "white men" who were unjustly imprisoned

in his warped view.

[JonLP24]

31. I think he was just using example

Not that he was making that overall argument. He also wrote a book where a young african-american teen is wrongfully executed (oops, major spoiler) for a murder he didn't commit and the unwillingness from elected officials for political reasons was reflective of his feelings of how he feels about the justice system.

[JonLP24]

29. What I got from what he was trying to say

Context was lacking from the justice system and should be an important like the drunk guy (agree, bad example) doesn't need to spend time like someone who actively views it or whatever it is they do.

I think this is the problem with mandatory minimums as well as the locking up too many people factor.

[Aerows]

34. Or your asshole brother-in-law

downloads a bunch of crap on your mom's computer over Christmas and forgets to empty the recycling bin.

I don't know if it was kiddie porn or not, but it certainly was a slew of porn and it took me a week to clean up her computer from the viruses it had. I didn't want to examine it to closely, for obvious reasons.

Asshole.

[zappaman]

32. No, he's not.

What he said is fucking ridiculous and disgusting.
Essentially saying "It's ok if my buddy looks at child porn cuz he only does it when he's drunk."
are you fucking kidding me?

[840high]

33. No - he is not.

[KitSileya]

35. Grisham's friend sent 13 pictures, some of victims younger than 12

To undercover cops. Some of the pictures included rape.

This is not some guy accidentally clicking on a link, and then not knowing how to get rid of it from their browser cache, like Grisham is pretending it is. I repeat, Grisham's friend, sent pornographic pictures of kids younger than 12 to undercover cops, and Grisham is either deliberately misleading, or he.doesn't.care. The friend, a lawyer, was re-admitted to the bar after he served 15 of the 18 months he was sentenced for. Grisham wrote a letter supporting his friend's re-admittance.

Grisham supports child pornographers. Still going to support him?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11168535/John-Grishams-friend-swapped-pornographic-images-of-children-under-12.html

[mainer]

37. Lack of judicial proportionality was his point.

Unfortunately he chose an example of a friend whose circumstances he clearly did not entirely know.

But his point remains: that our system lacks a sense of proportionality when crack users serve more time than cocaine users, when blacks are incarcerated more than whites (and he should know as he's founder of his state's Innocence Project) and when someone who views online porn can be sentenced to the same incarceration as those who created that porn. It's the equivalent of saying that if you view a beheading video, then you are guilty of murder.

His message went off the rails when the press glommed onto his remarks about his law school acquaintance ... and missed his larger message about our screwed-up justice system.

I'm a woman and a mother and no one I know has been accused of that crime, so I feel I can view this with a neutral and non-hysterical perspective. And it pains me to hear the vitriol against Grisham, who has always worked to make our justice system a fairer one.

[alarimer]

41. I think he has a point, even if he stated it badly.

Although maybe he shouldn't use his friend as the example.

[MindPilot]

42. Grisham speaks an inconvenient truth.

My cred is that I work with advocacy groups to reduce--and eliminate--mandatory sentencing. While the focus is drug sentences, that is just the tip of the iceberg. The mandatory minimums for child porn offenses are epic in their level of twisted logic.

When it comes to keeping the private prisons full, child porn is the new crack. Now that people have seen the errors of the drug war's ways, and as its ability to supply the private prison industry with slave labor begins to wane, child porn convictions are a godsend. Perfect model inmates for Prison Industries, Inc who unlike their drug-dealing gang-banger counterparts, are older, better educated, whiter, less violent, and have a lot to lose. A docile, compliant, and skilled slave labor force is the endgame. There are quite a few (former--they become former upon conviction) military officers in this group.

In many cases the person who Grisham describes will get a much harsher sentence than the creep who actually produced the porn. In most cases child porn offenses are prosecuted at the federal level, whereas the very real crime of raping a child is prosecuted at the state level. So like many of our problems, we think we can fix it by locking people up, and as long as _somebody_ is getting locked up we're cool.

Reality is there is simply no defense when the feds charge you. That "Law & Order" stuff you see on TV is just not how it is. Federal prosecutors win 98% of their cases. And they do it by "expanding the investigation" to include your family, friends, and employer. You can go before a jury, after paying a attorney everything you've worked for up to this point, still lose, and get 25 years, or take a plea for seven and maybe do five. Even complete innocence will not keep you out of prison.

If you are surfing around on the dark web or downloading movies from file sharing sites, it is very, very easy to get child porn on your computer. I know of one federal inmate who had only cached images on his computer. As soon as he realized he had gone to the wrong site, it was too late. The site was an FBI-operated honey-pot, and he was done.

If you do realize you have stumbled into the wrong place, and delete the files and run a registry cleaner, that is a mandatory increase to your sentence--an "upward departure" it's called--because you used your computer skills to cover your crime. there are also upward departures for increasing number of images so each frame of a movie is an image. Someone who reportedly had tens of thousands of images probably had one short video but prosecutors will make it sound like he was a producer.

Most of the laws about child porn were written when video tape was new. If you had child porn, you either knew the guy who made it, or knew somebody who did. The same laws are still being applied in an Internet world, and it simply does not work.

Grisham has clearly done his research.