The story of the freakish execution that Sam tells Adam, about a condemned prisoner beating his head against a metal pole inside the gas chamber, is a true story. It happened to Mississippian Jimmy Lee Gray in 1983.
In a 2006 BBC TV Culture Show interview, John Grisham stated that this was the adaptation of his work he liked least
Gene Hackman and Faye Dunaway play father and daughter even though in real life, he is only 11 years older than her.
This was the least successful of John Grisham's novels to be adapted theatrically at the box office in 1996 while The Firm (1993), The Pelican Brief (1993), The Client (1994), and A Time to Kill (1996) all grossed over $100 million domestically. The Rainmaker (1997) and Runaway Jury (2003) were both critical and modest box office hits when they were released. The Firm (1993) is the only one to gross more than $150 million of all of Grisham's films to date.