It is one of the most disturbing what-ifs in the moral argument over capital punishment: What if someone innocent of the crime is put to death before the evidence that would exonerate them can be brought to light? John Grisham’s The Confession (2010) is at once a tense race-against-the-clock legal thriller about the doomed efforts of a defense attorney and a Lutheran minister to prevent the execution of an innocent man on death row in Texas, a polemic against capital punishment, and a scathing indictment of the American justice system for being unable to rise above politics and race.

In the novel, a career criminal, dying of an inoperable brain tumor, admits to a Lutheran minister that 10 years earlier he raped, tortured, and strangled a high school girl. Meanwhile, the man falsely convicted of the crime (a conviction based on flimsy witness testimony and a coerced confession) is just days away from lethal injection. Grisham examines the complex issue of capital punishment through the perspectives of lawyers, judges, detectives, journalists, politicians, as well as family members of the innocent man and the murder victim. The novel thus investigates The Fallibility of Capital Punishment, The Relationship Between Justice and Race in America, The Dynamics of a Family under Pressure, and The Need for Activism in the face of a flawed law and order system.

Grisham, a prolific writer of more than 40 legal thrillers—many #1 bestsellers developed into major studio film releases—draws on his experience as legal counsel for the Innocents Project, a nonprofit organization that since 1992 has championed DNA evidence to secure the release of the wrongly convicted. In 2019, Treehouse Films optioned The Confession for film adaptation.

This guide references the 2011 Dell paperback edition.

Content Warning: The novel features graphic descriptions of violence, sexual assault, and rape. It also depicts overt and systemic racism, as well as the state-sponsored killing of an innocent person.

Plot Summary

In autumn 1998, in the small East Texas town of Slone, Travis Boyette, an itinerant construction worker with a long criminal history of violent behavior, kidnaps, rapes, tortures, and then strangles Nicole Yarber, a popular high school cheerleader. To ensure the body is never found, Boyette buries Nicole six hours away in a remote wooded area near Joplin, Missouri, where he grew up.

Slone is in shock. On an anonymous tip, the police arrest Donté Drumm, a Black football player who was romantically interested in Nicole. Donté denies having anything to do with the disappearance, but police, headed by Detective Drew Kerber, coerce a confession from Donté after nearly 15 hours of interrogation without a lawyer. Donté signs the false confession certain that Nicole will turn up soon. Despite a lack of witnesses, motive, and body, District Attorney Paul Koffee pursues the case. Donté is found guilty by an all-white jury and sentenced to death row.

Nine years later, despite the heroic efforts of Robbie Flak, Donté’s attorney, Donté faces execution. All his appeals have been exhausted. Boyette, out on parole and living now in Topeka, Kansas, with an inoperable brain tumor, decides to confess his crime and get the innocent man off death row. On impulse, he stops at a Lutheran church near the halfway house where he is staying. After Boyette confesses to Reverend Keith Schroeder, Schroeder is uncertain what to do. The execution is less than a week away. A local lawyer advises Schroeder to be careful: High-profile capital punishment cases tend to bring out publicity-seeking cranks. But Schroeder feels in his heart that Boyette is being honest and that Schroeder must at least try to help the innocent man.

As white residents of Slone brace for the execution, they fear that the town’s Black community will riot since they have long been suspicious of the verdict and certain that justice has not been done. Flak, running on caffeine and adrenaline, works every angle to get a stay of execution. But Donté’s confession is the sticking point. Nicole’s and Donté’s families await the execution.

When Schroeder finally gets through to Flak, Flak is dubious about Boyette’s last-minute confession. Boyette will only explain where Nicole’s body is buried in person. Since time is running out for Donté, Schroeder drives Boyette the 15 hours to Slone—an illegal act since aiding a parolee to leave the state is a crime. Along the way, Boyette slips in and out of consciousness. Boyette arrives and manages to tape his confession. With execution only hours away, a copy of the confession is sent by courier to the Texas governor’s office in Austin. However, his staff decides not to show it to the governor. The defense team tries to file a stay of execution appeal with a transcript of the confession, but they are seven minutes too late. Less than an hour later, Donté Drumm is executed. That night, racial tensions in Slone explode. The church where Nicole’s family worships is torched, and then a Black church is burned down.

Flak promises to clear Donté’s name, if only posthumously. With Boyette’s help, Nicole’s body is recovered in Joplin, and DNA tests confirm Boyette as the killer. Flak charges the Slone DA Koffee and Detective Kerber with criminal malfeasance. Despite Flak’s threat to indict the governor, the governor publicly maintains his faith in capital punishment and refuses to enact even a six-month moratorium on executions.

After Nicole’s body is recovered, Boyette collapses. He is rushed to a nearby hospital, but escapes. Now Schroeder faces an agonizing moral dilemma: He has been instrumental in freeing a dangerous rapist and killer. Although his wife and his lawyer assure Schroeder that he was acting heroically to save a wrongfully convicted man from a death sentence, Schroeder makes a public confession, and, on the advice of his bishop, resigns his pastoral appointment. A liberal-leaning Lutheran congregation in Austin, Texas, however, invites the minister to become their pastor.

Boyette is arrested attempting to abduct a woman in Overland Park, Kansas. In an extraordinary public hearing, a judge in Slone announces that Donté Drumm has been exonerated and that Travis Boyette, despite his terminal illness, will face murder charges.