London - Novelist John Grisham says the United States is handing out unduly harsh prison sentences for child pornography offences to men who probably just had too much to drink and "pushed the wrong buttons."
Grisham told Britain's Daily Telegraph that US prisons were "filled with guys my age. Sixty-year-old white men in prison who have never harmed anybody, would never touch a child".
He said many of those jailed "got online one night and started surfing around, probably had too much to drink or whatever, and pushed the wrong buttons, went too far and got into child porn".
In an interview published on Thursday to promote his latest legal thriller, Gray Mountain, Grisham said he had "no sympathy for real paedophiles" but that others were being punished too harshly.
