Ultimate Punishment: A Lawyer's Reflections on Dealing with the Death Penalty

Turow, Scott

ISBN 10: 0374128731 / ISBN 13: 9780374128739

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003

About this Item

Signed. First Edition. Signed by the author on the title page. First edition with full numberline. DJ shows minor wear, pages clean.

Seller Inventory # mon0003372591

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Ultimate Punishment: A Lawyer's Reflections on Dealing with the Death Penalty
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Publication Date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0374128731
• ISBN 13: 9780374128739
• Binding: hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Includes dust jacket.
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)

About this title

Synopsis

America's leading writer about the law takes a close, incisive look at one of society's most vexing legal issues

Scott Turow is known to millions as the author of peerless novels about the troubling regions of experience where law and reality intersect. In "real life," as a respected criminal lawyer, he 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.

This gripping, clear-sighted, necessary examination of the principles, the personalities, and the politics of a fundamental dilemma of our democracy has all the drama and intellectual substance of Turow's celebrated fiction.

About the Author

Scott Turow is the world-famous author of six best-selling novels about the law, from Presumed Innocent (1987) to Reversible Errors (2002), which centers on a death penalty case. He lives with his family outside Chicago where he is partner in the firm of Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal.