Famous best-selling author John Grisham had a face-off in the courtroom and won. A federal judge has dismissed a libel lawsuit filed against him and two other writers over books they wrote about the wrongful conviction of two men in a 1982 murder. Filed last year by former Ontotoc County District Attorney Bill Peterson, former Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation investigator Gary Rogers and Melvin Hett, a state criminalist, the three helped win the original convictions in the slaying of cocktail waitress Debbie Sue Carter.

Alleging that the defendants set out a personal attack, conspiring to commit libel, generate publicity for themselves by placing the plaintiffs in a false light and intentionally inflicting emotional distress, Judge Ronald White rejected the claims in his ruling Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Oklahoma.

After two men were convicted of murdering the waitress, 12 years later, they were released from prison due to DNA evidence that cleared them. Later linked to the murder was a key witness, Glen Gore, whose DNA matched the killers and was found guilty of the murder and sentenced to life in prison.

According to the judge, it’s highly important to analyze and criticize the judicial system “so that past mistakes do not become future ones,” which is what Grisham did in his book titled, The Innocent Man.

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