 | Price Comparisons: Rental | | Sorry, the textbook you were looking for is not available as Rental, at any of the stores we searched. | Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com | 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.
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Average Customer Rating:   Thoughtful and balanced UP is a very thoughtful and balanced attempt to approach a difficult subject. One of the best things about this book is the tacit acknowledgement that this really isn't an issue where one side is right and the other is wrong; both sides have very meritorious arguments. While I, too, tend to be "agnostic" on the subject (while leaning towards "opposed"), UP presented several perspectives, for both sides, that I had not considered.
A well written, insightful, and balanced book.
Recommended. the Ultimate Punishment I have read the Ultimate Punishment and listened to it on CD. Scott Turow presents a very thoughtful and nonemotional view of how the death penalty in America, (i.e.,Texas) is very irrational and blatantly unfair. He uses examples, rational thought, and very logical arguments. I urge all judges, lawyers, and policy makers to read it. If you do not fit into one of these categories, then you as a citizen of the world must read it and then have the policy makers listen to you. Whatever your religious or moral views are on the death penalty. Any rational person including me, a former 15 year prosecutor, will agree; the death penalty is simply wrong and unfair. Angela Moore His "X" On "No" Excellent, excellent book. Essential, even.
Everyone should read it.
See, because my own views on the topic were very... elementary. And the topic itself is anything but elementary. The issue of capital punishment is not easily dealt with, it is not rudimentary. It is very intricate. It's convoluted.
It's a matter of life. And death.
It is ignorance to say, "I believe in it" or "I don't believe in it" without examining what is involved in choosing either decision. And here are 125 pages that are a great introduction into the matter.
Turow, a respected criminal lawyer [and bestselling author of crime-novels] was one of fourteen experts Governor George Ryan of Illinois appointed to serve on his Commission on Capital Punishment. While in office as governor, Ryan declared a moratorium on executions in the state. In March of the year 2000, realizing that abolition was not a current valid option, Ryan posed the following question to the Committee:
What reforms, if any, would make application of the death penalty in Illinois fair, just, and accurate?
Wow!
How's that for a homework assignment, huh kids?
For 24 months this Committee researched and deliberated, utilizing their combined years of experience and expertise to finally offer [in April of 2002] an impressive list of proposals for reform of the current system as applied to the state of Illinois.
Reading this book, one gets a sense of the arduous journey that is necessary in coming to any sort of reasonable expression of how we may humanly [not to mention, humanely] accomplish the inexpressible... the legalization of the taking of life.
All of that journey, not just a portion of it, is uphill.
And all of it is never-ending.
Turow [convincingly, in my opinion] argues that capital punishment and the promise of due process of law are incompatible, and concludes by saying that if he were asked on a ballot whether Illinois should retain capital punishment, would put his "X" on "No."
Read this book, and then sincerely ask yourself, if you would not do likewise.
All I know is that It has profoundly altered the way I have formerly thought about this impossible-to-exaggerate dilemma of our time. Death penalty agnostic Being a death penalty agnostic I was pushed to the pro-capital punishment side of the aisle by Mr. Turow's book. He uses the wrongly convicted and prosecution malfeasance as his main reasons for opposing the death penalty.
The criminals that Mr. Turow choses to highlight are for the most part deserving of termination. The fact that one criminal in a group murder gets the death penalty while others in the group get 45 years is not a reason to say the death penalty is used inappropriately. All of the criminals in the group who participated in a crime where death of the victim was caused should be given death. I was very disappointed in the way defendants of capital crimes were referred to as "Henry" or "Chris" by Mr. Turow. Sympathy for defendants in a controlled environment was ill founded. Advocating proper and intelligent prosecution and investigation of crimes would be a better cause for Mr. Turow.
Mr. Turow is not a death penalty agnostic. He is clearly on the side of anti-captial punishment and trying to appear objective by saying he "would push the button on John Wayne Gacey does not fool me. The single best general-purpose book on this subject. Beautifully written and fully readable. Turow is level-headed and entirely fair-minded. He enters his study of the death penalty as an "agnostic" about it and ends up calling for abolition. I have purchased 15 copies and given them to my open-minded pro-death penalty friends. I wish I could say they all came around, but I think all took the book seriously and it forced them to examine their views on the death penalty. Highly recommended. |  |
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