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
his latest work, Ultimate Punishment : A Lawyer's Reflections
on Dealing with the Death Penalty, 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.
Information
on the Interviewer: Jeffrey Toobin
Jeffrey
Toobin has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since
January 1993. Mr.
Toobin is also the legal analyst for CNN, which he joined in 2002
after six years with ABC News. In 2000, he received an Emmy Award
for his coverage of the Elian Gonzalez case. His most recent book
is Too Close to Call: The 36-Day Battle to Decide the 2000
Election, which was published in 2001 by Random House. He
is also the author of A Vast Conspiracy: The Real Story
of the Sex Scandal that Nearly Brought Down a President (Random
House, 2000), and The Run of His Life: The People v. O.J. Simpson
(Random House, 1996). Both books were New York Times best-sellers.
Since joining the magazine,
Mr. Toobin has covered legal affairs and written articles on such
subjects as Attorney General John Ashcroft, the Florida recount,
Kenneth Starr's investigation of President Clinton, the Paula
Jones sexual harassment case, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas,
and the trials of Timothy McVeigh and O.J. Simpson. In his article,
"Lunch With Martha," published in the February 3, 2003, issue
of the magazine, Toobin obtained the first interview with Martha
Stewart regarding her investigation for insider trading. His article
"An Incendiary Defense," published in the July 25, 1994, issue
of the magazine, disclosed for the first time the Simpson defense
team's plans to accuse Mark Fuhrman of planting evidence and to
play "the race card."
Prior to joining The
New Yorker, Mr. Toobin served as an Assistant United States
Attorney in Brooklyn, New York. He also served as an associate
counsel in the Office of Independent Counsel Lawrence E. Walsh,
an experience that provided the basis for his first book, Opening
Arguments: A Young Lawyer's First Case--United States v. Oliver
North.
Mr. Toobin received his A.B. from Harvard
College in 1982, and in 1986, graduated magna cum laude from Harvard
Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review.
Mr. Toobin lives in Manhattan with his wife and two children.
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