The Confession is a polemic, and as such it is designed not to encourage debate over a hot-button topic but rather to convert the reader to change opinions and, in turn, effect authentic, broad social change. John Grisham assumes that his readers are like Reverend Schroeder, well-meaning, but as yet unaware of the fallibility of the capital punishment system. Schroeder may preach a compelling sermon on forgiveness, but it takes him personally witnessing a victim of a deeply flawed system of injustice being escorted into the death chamber in Huntsville to fully grasp that judges, lawyers, police detectives, and politicians are not perfect, so a legal system made up of their uneven methods sometimes makes mistakes. Grisham’s argument is consistent, clear, and unmistakable: A wrongfully incarcerated prisoner can be freed, but capital punishment is absolute.

Indeed, the novel is deliberately one-sided. Not only is Donté innocent, but he comes from a deeply religious, loving family, and is a rising football star. Everything about his arrest, questioning, trial, sentencing, and appeals is horribly flawed: Police arrest him on the basis of a tip from Joey Gamble, who nurses a racist grudge; the interrogation of the confused and terrified 17-year-old Donté violates many laws; the prosecutor and the judge in the trial are deeply compromised by their affair; Donté is sentenced to death without the police recovering a body despite the rule of habeas corpus; and most egregiously, the failure of the final appeal comes down to a judge closing the appeals office early on the night of an execution for a tennis game and a governor’s staff that decides exculpatory evidence does not merit the governor’s attention because of his upcoming reelection.