In the 1760s, jurist William Blackstone asserted that it was better for 10 guilty men to go free than for one innocent person to be wrongly convicted. The sentiment, famously echoed two decades later by Benjamin Franklin, was not original to Blackstone. The same idea appears in the first book of the Bible, in Genesis 18:23-32, and finds expression in Greek and Roman jurisprudence, even in legal systems that operated on the presumption of guilt. Presumption of guilt is not the foundation of American law, but it does resonate with the average person who deals with the fear of wrongful conviction by presuming that it cannot happen. The American system of jurisprudence relies on public confidence in the legal system. Grisham makes the point in the Afterword that The Racketeer has no basis in fact. In another series, The Judge’s List and The Whistler, featuring Lacy Stoltz, Grisham makes the point that the American judicial system is remarkably free of crime or graft, and only four sitting federal judges have ever been murdered.

Maintaining the integrity of the legal system is a matter of public vigilance. Grisham makes the point in the course of the story that every wrongful conviction costs the taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars.