Novelist supports N.C. Center on Actual Innocence

By KEITH UPCHURCH

kupchurch@heraldsun.com; 419-6612

DURHAM -- Novelist John Grisham, master of the legal thriller, came to Hope Valley Country Club on Tuesday to support The North Carolina Center On Actual Innocence. He also detailed plans for his next two books and recalled earlier dreams of a baseball career.

Grisham said his next book, "Ford County,'' will be his first collection of short stories, half of which will deal with lawyers. "It's a lot of small-town color, a lot of small-town humor and a lot of small-town law,'' he said. He said the book takes place in a fictional location he created in his first book, "A Time to Kill.''

After that, he plans another "big, thick legal thriller'' which he'll work on this winter and next spring and summer. It's set for publication in November 2010.

In an interview before his talk, Grisham, a former lawyer who has written extensively about the criminal justice system, said he favors three changes to reduce the chance of wrongful convictions:

n Require police to videotape their interrogations in serious crimes. "They have the video and audio equipment, but they don't use it until they've had the suspect in the basement of the police department for 15 hours and they've got a confession,'' he said. "Video the whole thing. Show us what you did.''

n Tighten up laws and police procedures in witness identification. "Eyewitness identification is notoriously inaccurate,'' he said, ''because the poor victim is so traumatized.''

n Provide national certification for forensic experts. "There's so much junk science out there. Some of our courts still use hair analysis and bite marks analysis, and it's total junk.''

On a lighter note, Grisham said his childhood dream of a baseball career fizzled in his teens, but added that it was for the best.

"Well, you know, it takes a lot of time to get that dream out of your blood,'' he said. "But when I was 19 years old, I tried to play college baseball and I saw my first 90 mph fastball. And I never want to see another one. I mean, you can barely see the ball. I knew I was in way over my head, so I knew it was over.''

Also speaking were Darryl Hunt, who was wrongfully convicted in 1984 of the rape and murder of a Winston-Salem newspaper copy editor, Deborah Sykes, but was later exonerated by DNA evidence; and Dwayne Allen Dail, who served 18 years in North Carolina prisons for the 1987 rape of a 12-year-old girl before DNA testing proved his innocence. Both men have been freed.

Hunt said he'd like to see police lineups done by computer, instead of having police spread out photos on a table. He also favors doing more research on jailhouse informants before they're used to testify.

Despite spending a large chunk of his life in prison for a crime he didn't commit, Hunt said he's not bitter.

"One of the things I learned is that you cannot be angry,'' he said. "Anger only eats you up inside. So I asked God and people to help me and help others. And to do that, I first had to be willing to forgive others for what they've done to me.''

Dail also said he's not angry, but wants to see changes in the justice system.

"I feel like law enforcement and the court system have so much immunity that there is no consequence to the district attorney doing sloppy work and to the sheriffs and detectives with police departments,'' he said. "They have clear immunity. And it seems like they are above the law, because they are the law.''

He called for better preservation of evidence ''and a bit of consequences when the counties and cities'' fail to do so.

Tuesday's visit was sponsored by The North Carolina Center On Actual Innocence, which investigates post-conviction claims of innocence from unrepresented North Carolina inmates.