Book review: The Last Lawyer: The Fight to Save Death Row Inmates

I just finished reading "The Last Lawyer" last night.  I would recommend it to anyone who has not been privy to the lengthy, complex and personal winding road of death penalty appeals and the court proceedings.  I agree with Leonard Pitts (one of my favorite syndicated columnist) who, on the book jacket, describes the book as reading "like first-class legal fiction, but it's far more compelling because it is, tragically, legal fact."  So true.  It was an extremely easy read and felt like story unfolding before me.  I found myself frequently saying "just one more short chapter" before going to bed.  Extremely well written.

Readers of this blog will likely find the later half of the book (starting on page 130) particularly interesting (and sobering) as the use of intelligence test scores and the diagnosis of MR/ID becomes a major point of the story.  How some of those in the legal field (and one judge in particular) played with the IQ scores and failed to recognize that they are imperfect measures (the need to recognize measurement error)  is eye-opening and sobering to those of us involved in intelligence testing development and research.

I give it two big thumbs up.

THE LAST LAWYER: A NEW BOOK ABOUT A BORDERLINE MENTALLY RETARDED DEATH ROW INMATE (GUEST POST BY AUTHOR JOHN TEMPLE)

Click here for more information about the book and a link to the authors web site.

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