AceShowbiz -

John Grisham has apologized after saying that jail sentence for people who watch child porn is too severe. In a statement released on his website on Thursday, October 16, the author who is popular for his works such as "The Firm", "The Client" and "A Time to Kill" among others backtracks his previous statement and says that he's sorry.

"Anyone who harms a child for profit or pleasure, or who in any way participates in child pornography - online or otherwise - should be punished to the fullest extent of the law," the statement reads. He adds that his comments published on U.K.'s The Telegraph were "in no way intended to show sympathy for those convicted of sex crimes, especially the sexual molestation of children."

"I can think of nothing more despicable," he continued. "I regret having made these comments, and apologize to all."

Grisham made the statement during an interview to promote his new novel "Gray Mountain". "We have prisons now filled with guys my age, 60-year-old white men, in prison, who've never harmed anybody (and) would never touch a child," he said of U.S. prison rate.

"But they got online one night and started surfing around, probably had too much to drink or whatever, and pushed the wrong buttons and went too far and got into child porn. ... They deserve some type of punishment, but 10 years in prison?" he added. "There's so many of them now, sex offenders ... that they put them in the same prison, like they're a bunch of perverts or something."

"I have no sympathy for a real pedophile. But so many of these guys don't deserve harsh prison sentences," he said. Grisham shared a story of his friend who had been drinking "out of control" and "downloaded some stuff" from a website containing child porn a decade ago. The site ended up being a part of a sting operation and his friend was sentenced to three years in prison. "He shouldn't have done it. It was stupid. But it wasn't 10-year-old boys, and he didn't touch anything," Grisham added.