In this account of how his views on the death penalty have evolved, Scott Turow describes his own experiences with capital punishment, from his days as an impassioned young prosecutor to his recent service on the Illinois Commission that investigated the state's administration of the death penalty and influenced Governor George Ryan's unprecedented commutation of the sentences of 167 death row inmates on his last day in office. Along the way, Turow 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 victim's survivors; and tells the powerful stories behind the statistics, as he moves from the governor's mansion to Illinois' Super-Max prison and the execution chamber.