Research for his best-selling book “The Chamber” changed John Grisham’s opinion on the death penalty, he told a Baylor University audience the morning after Texas executed its ninth inmate this year.
Grisham made a rare public speech to a capacity crowd in Baylor’s Waco Hall Feb. 25 as part of an international conference on writing and spirituality called “Art and Soul.” He spoke just hours after the execution of Betty Beets.
In preparation for writing the novel, Grisham made frequent visits to death row at the Mississippi State Penitentiary. He got to know the guards, the inmates and the stories of some of the convicted killers’ victims, he said.
He even let guards strap him in the death-chamber gurney to get the feel of what it’s like to be there.
During one of those death-chamber visits — a night visit not normally allowed — just he and a lone guard stood inside the tiny, antiseptic room.
“I read somewhere that you’re a Christian,” the guard said to him.
“Yes, I am,” replied Grisham, a lifelong Southern Baptist and active layman.
“Do you think Jesus would approve of what we do here?” the guard asked.
The answer Grisham gave, he said, was different than what he would have said before he started visiting death row. And it was different from what he had learned growing up in the Baptist church.
“No,” Grisham said. “I don’t think that’s what Jesus taught.”
Then the guard had another question, one Grisham said he never was asked before and never has been asked since.
“Well, then,” the guard said, “who do you believe in — Jesus or the state of Mississippi?”
Grisham told the Baylor audience he now struggles with conflicted emotions on the death penalty. On one hand, he doesn’t believe killing other humans is what Jesus taught, he said. “But at the same time, with every execution there’s a sense that justice has been done, and I can’t escape it.”
The death-row experience is just one of many ways faith influences his writing and writing novels challenges his faith, Grisham said.
He probably wouldn’t even be a novelist if it weren’t for a concern for social justice, he explained.
Early in his career as an attorney in Mississippi, he spent many hours hanging around the local courthouse and listening to trials, he said. One day he heard the testimony of a woman who had been raped, and the tragic story of what had happened as a result of that rape was so compelling he felt he must write it down.
“I sat down late one night and wrote the first page of what would become ‘A Time to Kill,’ ” he recalled. He never had written a book before and had no intentions of becoming a novelist.
“I wanted so desperately to capture this story,” he recalled. “But I didn’t know if I’d finish it.”
After three years of late-night writing, he had a novel but couldn’t find a publisher. He was rejected by about 15 publishers and the same number of literary agents, he said.
When he finally found an agent willing to shop the book around, it took the agent a full year to secure a publisher. The initial press run was 5,000. And Grisham bought 1,000 of those himself.
“I didn’t have a lot of money, but I had more than my publisher,” he quipped.
Those first volumes, which originally sold for $18 and which Grisham hawked at small-town libraries in his quest to get rid of his 1,000 copies, now sell for $3,000 apiece, he noted.
While waiting for “A Time to Kill” to get published, Grisham worked on writing his second book, “The Firm.”
After first reading the manuscript, his agent urged him to spice it up with more sex and profanity.
“I’m not going to do that,” Grisham responded.
“Fine,” the agent finally submitted. And then nothing happened for months. The agent, Grisham said, would not aggressively promote the book without the saucier content he thought was necessary.
Then, unknown to Grisham, someone stole a copy of the manuscript and took it to Hollywood. That changed everything.
Grisham recounted how he was called away from his duties as a Sunday School teacher to 3-year-olds one morning. He had just returned from a grocery store where he had gone to pick up juice and crackers for the preschool department, when his wife told him he must call his agent immediately.
A bidding war had begun over the movie rights to “The Firm,” even though Grisham never had submitted it to a studio, and the book had not been published. Grisham authorized his agent to take the highest bid, and then he went back to church.
The worship service that day lasted forever, Grisham recalled. After a long sermon, observance of the Lord’s Supper and three baby dedications, he arrived home at 12:30 p.m. and found the telephone ringing. It was his agent. The movie rights had been sold for $600,000.
Though life forever changed from that moment forward, Grisham has maintained a somewhat normal lifestyle, volunteering as commissioner of his community’s Little League and participating in mission trips to Central America.
He was careful to distinguish himself as a Christian who happens to be a writer rather than a writer of Christian literature.
Nevertheless, faith does influence his writing, although “you can’t preach too much” in popular fiction, he admitted.
Another book was influenced by his experiences visiting a homeless shelter in Washington, D.C. When a woman and her three malnourished children came into the shelter one night, “I was overcome with compassion but also with guilt,” he admitted.
“Jesus taught us to care for the poor. … I felt a great sense of shame for my own meager efforts. I prayed about it and said, ‘God forgive me.’
“That night, the story of ‘The Street Lawyer’ came together,” Grisham said, fueled by his passion to bring attention to the plight of the homeless. (ABP)
Church leaders question death penalty
Alabama is one of six states throughout the nation considering a legally authorized period of delay on the death penalty, and many religious leaders and organizations have recently taken stands.
Protestant, Jewish and Catholic leaders urged Congress and the White House on March 9 to suspend federal executions while capital punishment is examined for disproportionately targeting minorities and poor people.
Following the lead of Illinois Gov. George Ryan, who imposed a moratorium on executions while investigators try to find out why more death sentences have been overturned than carried out, religious leaders said Congress must halt executions so that no innocent inmates are put to death.
A dozen religious leaders gathered at the U.S. Capitol with Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., who has introduced a bill to abolish the federal death penalty. Feingold’s bill is currently working its way through a Senate committee, but so far Feingold has managed to find only one other senator to support the bill.
More than 30 religious leaders from a broad spectrum of faiths signed a letter to President Clinton urging a federal moratorium. Clinton has previously refused to issue such a ban.
Phil Wogaman, pastor of Washington D.C.’s Foundry United Methodist Church — the church regularly attended by President and Mrs. Clinton — said the death penalty should only be used if it can be assured it is being administered justly.
“There is no room here for mistakes,” Wogaman said. “No innocent person should ever be executed.”
Speaking for the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, Ricardo Ramirez, the bishop of Las Cruces, N.M., echoed statements by Pope John Paul II that society can never make up for a victim’s life by taking the life of the killer.
“We oppose capital punishment primarily because of what it does to us as a society,” Ramirez said. “It perpetuates a terrible cycle of violence and the notion that we can settle our most intractable problems by resorting to violence.”
Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson has added his support to a nationwide moratorium on capital punishment. (Compiled from wire services)
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