Stephen Horn was born in the Bronx, New York, and received an engineering degree from Rutgers University. He commanded an infantry company of the 101st Airborne Division in Vietnam. As a prosecutor in the justice Department's Civil Rights Division, he tried criminal cases and participated in some of the department's most famous investigations, including the killing of four Kent State students by the Ohio National Guard and the assassination of Dr. martin Luther King Jr. Now in the private practice of law, he lives outside Washington, D.C., with his wife and two children. In Her Defense is his first novel.