Grisham.jpegIn the wake of the coverage of John Grisham’s comments around lighter sentences for consumers of child pornography, as well as Grisham’s own public apology, we have had some commentary “in defense of John Grisham,” insisting that “the invective he’s receiving right now is both misinformed and wildly over the top,” and asking that his remarks be put into context – of his work on criminal justice reform, on racial parity in sentencing, and age of consent laws in the U.S., etc. Well, here is some more context.

The Daily Telegraph, not slow to follow up on the scandal it facilitated in the first place, has aired another report which specifically identifies the friend Grisham refers to, revealed to be Michael B. Holleman, and outlines both the facts known about his case at the time and Grisham’s role in his rehabilitation. Some of that report at least is confirmed by a 2002 Supreme Court of Mississippi ruling on “The Matter of the Petition for REINSTATEMENT to the Practice of Law OF Michael B. HOLLEMAN,” still available online. That report states that: “In late 1996 or early 1997, Holleman, while drinking heavily at his office, accessed some publically available computer images of child pornography on the internet. Holleman did not print any of the computer images, and after briefly viewing some of these images, he believed that he had deleted them from his computer. Following a seizure of Holleman’s computer in February 1997, federal agents recovered these images from his computer hard-drive.”

The Daily Telegraph also quotes reports from the local Sun Herald newspaper – which incidentally is running Grisham’s apology as the lead story on its website – to the effect that US justice department lawyer Kathy McLure stated during the trial that Holleman had swapped child porn images involving sex acts and intercourse involving children under 18, and even under 12. Without being completely clear on the context, the Telegraph report does suggest that anyone following the case, and the reporting of it, must have been aware of what Holleman had done.

Holleman was disbarred from practising law in 1998. After serving his sentence, he then filed a Petition for Reinstatement to the Practice of Law in November 2001. That petition was granted in June 2002, dependent partly on the proof “whether Holleman has rehabilitated himself since his disbarment and now possesses the requisite moral character to practice law.”  Holleman submitted in support of that determination “sixty letters of recommendation including … numerous other attorneys in Mississippi and Louisiana.” The last name on that list of numerous other attorneys is John Grisham.

Therefore, John Grisham wrote a character testimonial for Michael Holleman in support of his reinstatement as a lawyer, after Holleman’s conviction and incarceration. It appears very likely, unless the Telegraph reports are completely wrong, that Grisham also did this knowing that Holleman had done far worse than just foolishly browse a website involving supposed 16-year-olds, but had in fact actively traded porn clearly involving seriously underage participants.

I haven’t been able to find any further independent corroboration of the Telegraph quotes from the original Sun Herald trial reporting, and any assumptions about how much Grisham himself knew about the case without that would of course be speculation. But there at least is some context. It is a matter of legal record that Grisham did submit documents in support of Holleman. The question is how much more he knew.

2 COMMENTS

  1. Wow, it just gets worse for JG. I find it strange that his best book covered the topic of a man who murdered his eleven-year-old daughter’s rapists, but IRL he defends the creepy acts of his friend and deliberately obfuscates the facts of the case. I’m not a fan of his books, so I won’t have the difficult decision of deciding if I can still support his views indirectly by buying his books.

  2. Ok, as more info comes out about Grisham’s friend, I have definitely changed my opinion. He’s a Creeper with a capital C. I was giving this guy the benefit of the doubt that it was an actual mistake, cultural mix up, or fantasy play gone wrong. No. None of these are the case. If the allegations are true, this guy is bad news. Grisham needs to distance himself from this man, and this “friend” needs rehabilitation and/or jail time, not defending.

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