That's the title of a post at the Washington Post's Short Stack's blog on books. LINK
It's the severest penalty in the land: the death sentence. But often the rulings that put inmates on death row are riddled with questions. Did the defendant get adequate counsel? Was the witnesses' testimony reliable? Were the defendant's actions influenced by mental retardation or mental illness? In his book "The Last Lawyer: the Fight to Save Death Row Inmates," published by the University Press of Mississippi, John Temple takes a concentrated look at an idealistic lawyer named Ken Rose. For years, Rose has tackled the many concerns raised by implementation of the death penalty. Temple digs into one of the lawyer's toughest cases - - that of Bo Jones, a North Carolina farmhand - - to highlight a legal system in need of repair.
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When attorney Ken Rose first met Levon "Bo" Jones in 1997, he knew little about his client beyond the fact that Jones was scheduled to die by lethal injection in less than a week. As Rose soon found out, none of the lawyers who had represented Jones at trial had known much about him either.
No one had investigated any of the defenses that might have spared Jones the ultimate sentence. The prosecution had hung its case on the word of one witness, yet Jones's trial lawyers had barely spoken to her -- or any other witnesses.
Rose won a stay of execution for Jones and spent the next decade compiling an arsenal of evidence. Rose's legal team pored through the trial record, interviewing witnesses in trailer parks and law offices across North Carolina, unearthing one questionable fact after another. As it turned out, Jones's trial lawyer was related to the victim in the case.
And:
One rationale for capital punishment is that it's a special penalty reserved for the most-depraved murderers, the so-called "worst of the worst." But that's not what happened in the 1990s, according to Rose, one of the country's most experienced and respected capital appeals lawyers. Instead, Rose links the imposition of death sentences with the defendant's circumstances.
Rose's clients on death row in Raleigh's Central Prison tend to share certain traits. They are typically poor, unable to afford good defense at trial. Many are mentally ill or intellectually limited and unable to assist in their defense.
But the most crucial factor, according to Rose, is the location of the crime, as certain district attorneys pursue the death penalty in almost every murder trial while others view it as a special option. Duplin County, N.C., the poor, tobacco-and-turkey farming region where Bo Jones was convicted, is one of the prosecutorial hot zones.
Without Ken Rose's intervention, Bo Jones's story might have ended twelve years ago. Today, Rose continues to raise his voice, trying to convince the nation that capital sentences have not and cannot be consistently applied and therefore should be removed from the realm of legal possibility, once and for all.
More on John Temple's The Last Lawyer, here.
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