Excerpt of The Autobiography of an Execution by David R. Dow

David R. Dow has had access to a world most of us will never
experience. As a lawyer, he has represented over one hundred
death-row cases. Many of his clients have died. Most were
guilty. Some might have been innocent. The Autobiography of
an Execution is his deeply personal story about justice, the
death penalty, and a lawyer's life.

His life at paradoxical extremes: Witnessing executions and
then coming home to the loving embrace of his wife and young
son, who inqure about Dow's day. Waging moral battles on
behalf of people who have committed abhorrent crimes.
Fighting for life in America's death-penalty capital, within
a criminal justice system full of indifferent and
ineffectual judges. Racing against time on behalf of clients
who have no more time.

Regardless of your views on the death penalty, Dow's writing
will take you inside the issue in striking, intimate ways:
through the complicated minds of judges, inside prisons and
execution-administration chambers, and into his own home,
where the toll of working on these gnarled and difficult
cases is often paid. Ultimately, he shows us a world where
suspense clings to every word and action, where human lives
hang in the balance, and where doing the right thing is
never as easy as it sounds.