After 30 years as a CBS reporter and producer, Kurtis, who now hosts American Justice on A&E, re-examines his lifelong support of the death penalty, arguing eloquently that the risk of executing the wrong person is too great to let capital punishment stand. His reflections are motivated by the 2003 actions of then governor George Ryan of Illinois, a conservative Republican who commuted the sentences of the state's 164 death row inmates. Ryan's actions followed the exoneration through DNA evidence of 13 death row inmates. Kurtis frames his argument around two trials in which the wrong men were first convicted and then exonerated. Kurtis puts his reportorial skills to work, reconstructing in detail one case involving a brutal rape/murder, and another the stabbing of a mother, her two children and another child. Kurtis uses graphic, deeply disturbing descriptions of these murders as bases for arguing that inconceivable acts of violence can create a visceral sense that the death penalty is justified. Kurtis's refusal to shrink from this reality makes his indictment all the more compelling. This is not a book about abstract notions or legal technicalities; Kurtis examines our criminal justice system and finds it too "rife with the potential for error... to make death its product." Agent, Mort Janklow. (Nov.) Forecast: For people on the fence about capital punishment, this makes a good companion to Scott Turow's wider-ranging Ultimate Punishment. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Europeans despise us for it, religious leaders decry it, politicians hang their careers on it. The death penalty is part of the American landscape. And it's just plain wrong. So argues Kurtis, anchor of the A&E series American Justice, who has been on hand to report on some of the uglier capital crimes of the recent past: the Manson murders, Richard Speck's killing spree, John Wayne Gacy's slaughter of 20 young men. "Through these cases," he writes, "I learned there is true evil in the world, personified by predators who prey on the unsuspecting." Yet, in a species of what he recognizes as the peripeteia of classical tragedy--"the moment when you realize all you have believed is wrong"--he has come to disavow his long-standing belief in the righteousness and efficacy of the death penalty. So, too, did former Illinois governor George Ryan, who reviewed the books and discovered that half the capital cases in his state had been reversed and that the lawyers for nearly three dozen death-row inmates "had later been disbarred or at some point suspended from practicing law." Incompetent or corrupt lawyers are only part of the problem, Kurtis writes, turning to an in-depth analysis of two recent cases, one in Arizona and the other in Pennsylvania, where heinous murders were ascribed to apparently well-suited suspects and then, after agonizingly long periods of review, were revealed to have been sentenced to death through faulty evidence on one hand, a poor jury on the other, and razzle-dazzle lawyering on both, "which can tip the scales of justice." Supporters of capital punishment may reasonably object that Kurtis's sample set is too small to offer anything more than anecdotal evidence, but he closes with a fine lectern-shaking set of proofs that, among other things, the death penalty is not a deterrent to homicide ("Too much time has been wasted on this argument"), is too expensive (it's cheaper to incarcerate than to kill), and is unequally applied across states and ethnic and class lines. Points well-made, well-taken, and well-worthy of discussion. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Media celebrity and attorney Kurtis presents a carefully crafted perspective on the current state of the death penalty in America. Starting with Illinois governor George Ryan's sudden mass emptying of that state's death row, Kurtis goes on to present two case studies that illustrate the legal problems with capital punishment as currently executed in America. By choosing two specific cases, both fraught with errors in evidence, prosecutorial zeal, defense incompetence, and a host of other substantive and procedural problems, Kurtis shapes a solid, thoughtful case for his opposition to the death penalty. But by presenting as normative only these two cases, Kurtis leaves himself open to counterarguments based on other equally limited cases, such as those of John Wayne Gacy and Timothy McVeigh. Nevertheless, Kurtis' book is an important contribution to the debate on crime and punishment, and it is a strong and useful resource for students examining legal and social issues of the day. --Mark Knoblauch Copyright 2004 Booklist