As a pioneer of the modern legal novel and a criminal lawyer, Scott Turow has been involved with the death penalty for more than a decade, including successfully representing two different men convicted in death-penalty prosecutions. In this vivid account of how his views on the death penalty have evolved, Turow describes his own experiences with capital punishment from his days as an impassioned young prosecutor to his recent service on the Illinois commission which investigated the administration of the death penalty and influenced Governor George Ryan's unprecedented commutation of the sentences of 164 death row inmates on his last day in office.
Along the way, he provides a brief history of America's ambivalent relationship with the ultimate punishment, analyzes the potent reasons for and against it, including the role of the victims' survivors, and tells the powerful stories behind the statistics, as he moves from the Governor's Mansion to Illinois' state-of-the art 'super-max' prison and the execution chamber.
- ISBN10 0330427407
- ISBN13 9780330427401
- Publish Date 1 August 2003
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 13 June 2007
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Pan Macmillan
- Imprint Pan Books
- Format Paperback
- Pages 192
- Language English