The Last Lawyer: The Fight to Save Death Row Inmates
by John Temple
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Book Summary Information
Author: John TempleEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2009-09-24
ISBN: 1604733551
Number of pages: 224
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
Book Reviews of The Last Lawyer: The Fight to Save Death Row Inmates
Book Review: a great book
Summary: 5 Stars
I finished The Last Lawyer late last night. It is a great book.
This is a suspenseful story written without overly dramatizing and without synthetic suspense prose. It makes the legal system (almost) comprehensible to the average person. The people are presented in a compelling manner with all their humanity on display, neither deified nor condemned, just presented with understanding and humor. The objectivity is laudable and is a lamentably lonely and badly needed model for journalists and non-fiction writers. This book will do a lot to help people understand the conundrum of death penalty law and practice, and it will be effective in part because the author reports the situation as he saw it without proselytizing. He neither pushs a viewpoint nor avoids saying what he sees. The people he admires have quirks and faults; those he doesn't have likable qualities. The writing seems very unselfconscious in this respect, which disarms the reader so accustomed to being manipulated by writers.
One important thing of many that I learned is the point of view of the prosecutor, that if the death penalty weren't on the books, it would scale down the punishments for murder. I had never realized that aspect, the huge role plea bargaining plays in the whole system. We will never know (my guess) about the motivational role of the death penalty in discouraging murder, but it does seem reasonable to predict easier punishments resulting from its abolition, and to me that's a serious problem. The greatest tragedy (except for murder victims) of it all seems to me the huge time delays in resolving cases. Living on death row for 20 years - I can't see any benefit to anyone in that. Lessening the penalty for murder is a major concern, probably more important than the handful of executions that actually occur.
Of course, the shoddy incompetence of the Bo Jones prosecution is lamentable. The legal system must be reformed! But, then again, does it work any less effectively than any of our other institutions? Probably not, but the consequences can be devastating for individuals. Who shall reform it? Not single minded zealots like Ken and company for sure. It seems to be our lot as humans in a society to have our institutions swing back and forth between imperfect positions. Maybe they just reflect our nature as humans - imperfectible.
Summary of The Last Lawyer: The Fight to Save Death Row Inmates
The Last Lawyer is the true, inside story of how an idealistic legal genius and his diverse band of investigators and fellow attorneys fought to overturn a client's final sentence.
Ken Rose has handled more capital appeals cases than almost any other attorney in the United States. The Last Lawyer chronicles Rose's decade-long defense of Bo Jones, a North Carolina farmhand convicted of a 1987 murder. Rose called this his most frustrating case in twenty-five years, and it was one that received scant attention from judges or journalists. The Jones case bares the thorniest issues surrounding capital punishment. Inadequate legal counsel, mental retardation, mental illness, and sketchy witness testimony stymied Jones's original defense. Yet for many years, Rose's advocacy gained no traction, and Bo Jones came within three days of his execution.
The book follows Rose through a decade of setbacks and small triumphs as he gradually unearthed the evidence he hoped would save his client's life. At the same time, Rose also single-handedly built a nonprofit law firm that became a major force in the death penalty debate raging across the South.
The Last Lawyer offers unprecedented access to the inner workings of a capital defense team. Based on four and a half years of behind-the-scenes reporting by a journalism professor and nonfiction author, The Last Lawyer tells the unforgettable story of a lawyer's fight for justice.
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