“The death penalty is probably the one legal issue that everybody has an opinion about,” Although Turow, 53, still considers himself an “agnostic” when it comes to making moral When I asked him what he made of the fact that many nations do not have the death penalty, RANDOM Best title for the governator: Postscript:<\/STRONG> When Britney Spear poses nearly nude, it confounds “The death penalty is probably the one legal issue that everybody has an opinion about,” Scott Turow said. The best-selling novelist is out on the lecture circuit promoting his latest book from Farrar, Straus and Giroux, “Ultimate Punishment,” which he describes as “a memoir by way of an essay.” I caught his lecture the other […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-415","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-6H","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nTurow<\/EM><\/FONT><\/B><\/A> said. The best-selling novelist is out
\nFarrar, Straus and Giroux,
\nPunishment,”<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A> which he describes as “a memoir by way of an essay.” I
\ncaught his lecture the other night on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. <\/P>
\n
\njudgments about the death penalty, his arguments against execution were wholly
\npersuasive. I’ll leave them for the book to elucidate. Equally fascinating to me was his point that
\nover the years he’s “taken all positions”; he went from a complete idealist who believed in the
\nessential goodness of human nature when he was a student at Harvard Law to a total Hobbesian
\nwho believed the opposite when he became a federal prosecutor in his native Chicago. Since then,
\nhowever, he has reversed his views again and now does pro bono<\/I> work as a defense
\nattorney in capital cases while continuing to write
\nbooks<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A>.<\/P>
\n
\nhe pointed out that the reasons had less to do with morality or even with the idea of deterrence,
\nwhich he discounts in any case, than with their lower murder rates and, more interesting, their
\npolitical legacies. The various European countries and most of those in South America that do not
\nhave the death penalty have had long histories of unstable, authoritarian or totalitarian rule.
\nExecution by the state as a means of political control left those nations with a deep distrust of the
\ndeath penalty, he said. The United States, by contrast, with its long history of stable, democratic
\ngovernment, has rarely resorted to such draconian rule. Thus the death penalty was not freighted
\nwith the kind of political baggage that discouraged it.<\/P>
\n
\nNOTES<\/FONT><\/STRONG><\/P><\/FONT><\/FONT>
\n
\ncommentary:
\nbaloney<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A> … Stan Herd:
\nearthworks artist<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A> … Nothing brilliant but:
\nit<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A> … Last and least:
\nall that Seinfeld bother<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A>?<\/P>
\n
\nsome writers. “To be clear,” an MSNBC commentary notes, “there’s nothing inherently amoral or
\nscandalous about
\nWhat the writer objects to is the pop star’s poor command of English in an interview that
\naccompanies her photos. Odd thought: Should a writer who manifests
\nhis commentary for a mass audience try for plain English himself? Or
\nshould he get an editor to manifest it for him?<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"