Abstract
Ultimate Punishment: A Lawyer’s Reflections on Dealing with the Death Penalty is a book written by Scott Turow. Turow is not only a writer, but he also occupies the position of a lawyer, which helped him a lot to deepen into the subject and reveal it. This book is a non-fiction one, it is considered to be an autobiography that consists of several parts regarding the death penalty. The author believes that all people must have a chance to be treated fairly, that is why he supports the concept of unprejudiced justice.
Turow hopes that a free democracy will help to improve the facts of life and justice. He pays attention to the rights of the victims and community and looks at the death penalty from different sides to understand if it is the best way of punishment, as his confidence in this aspect dented.
The book Ultimate Punishment considers the concept of the death penalty from psychological and philosophical points of view. The majority of cases that are analyzed reveal the terrible hidden aspects of the Illinois justice system. Shocking details of the process are dragged to light. Its subjectivity can be seen, as very often there is no logic in the decisions. The first suspect who was detained is claimed to be guilty, and his rights concede the victim’s ones. People are made to believe that the system runs like clockwork, however, it is far from the truth, and the book makes them call this statement in question.
Critique
Having worked as a prosecutor and has been a member of Illinois’s Commission on Capital Punishment, Turow often dealt with condemned prisoners. His experience makes the author’s arguments look logical and trustworthy. Turow investigates the subject from different points. The opinions are not winged in, but look well though-out and sustained. Having analyzed the fact that is relevant to the case, the author changes the sides.
Such an approach may be considered as uncertainty. I believe that the impulse to write this book was the destruction of a stable opinion. Turow believed capital punishment to be a necessity and the state to have the power to manage people’s lives. When he changed his thoughts and conceded the possibility of the brought verdicts to be biased, the doubts were cast upon.
As a man of sense, Turow looked into the problem in detail and described the situations that occurred during his practice. In the book, the author admits that after the confession people are claimed to be guilty, however, this confession might be gained in questionable ways. People’s words and evidence are often adjusted to the needs of the prosecutor (Turow 19). Such accusatory statements are not made only on the presumptions and conjectures.
Turow states that many convicts were not eligible for capital punishment and studied the results of the medical expert reviews that proved the innocence of the accused people. For the information to be more authoritative, the author includes specific data and explains it. To fight his corner, Turow gives such details as the specification of a crime, testimony, evidence, and sentence. So the readers gain an opportunity to embrace his view or to reject it. Of course, Turow’s attitude is present in the perceptions. The book looks like his monologue, where “I” is in the first place. Personal attitudes, beliefs, and speculations connect different cases mentioned in the autobiography (Turow 81). However, the ideas are often supported by objective data.
Thus, Scott Turow attracts the readers’ attention to capital punishment and underlines that in many cases it is erroneously inflicted. Some will change their mind about the death penalty after reading this book, others will not, but everybody is sure to challenge it.
Works Cited
Turow, Scott. Ultimate Punishment: A Lawyer’s Reflections on Dealing with the Death Penalty, New York: Picador, 2004. Print.