Scott Turow is known to millions as the author of peerless novels about the troubling regions of experience where law and reality intersect. And as a respected criminal lawyer, he has been involved with the death penalty for more than a decade, successfully representing two different men convicted in death penalty prosecutinos. 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 Illinios Commission that investigated the state's administration of the death penalty and influenced Governor George Ryan's unprecedented commutation of the sentences of 167 death row inmates on his last day in office. Along the way, Turow provides a brief jistory of America's ambivalent relationship with the ultimate punishment; analyzes the potent reasons for and against it, including the role of the victim's survivors; and tells the powerful stories behind the statistics, as he moves from the governor's mansion to Illinios' Super-Max prison and 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.