IN PRINT: Grisham Headlines Fundraiser for Princeton Innocence Project

PRINCETON BOROUGH — Author John Grisham first heard about Princeton’s Centurion Ministries in 2005 when he was visiting attorney Mark Barrett in his Oklahoma office. They were talking about Barrett’s late client, Ron Williamson, a wrongfully convicted death row inmate whose trial and 1999 exoneration became the basis for Grisham’s nonfiction book, “The Innocent Man.”The files Barrett had collected for Williamson’s case included a few boxes marked Centurion Ministries, and Grisham asked Barrett about them.“He said, ‘Those guys only take the toughest cases,’” Grisham said Tuesday night at a benefit at Nassau Presbyterian Church for Centurion Ministries, a nonprofit organization that has freed 44 innocent people either on death row or serving life in prison.“Most people do not believe that innocent people go to prison,” said Grisham, the headline speaker for the fund-raising event. “Almost every wrongful conviction could have been prevented,” he said.Read the full story at nj.com.