Capital Defense: Inside the Lives of America’s Death Penalty Lawyers

The unsung heroes who defend the accused from the ultimate punishment

What motivates someone to make a career out of defending some of the worst suspected killers of our time? In Capital Defense, Jon B. Gould and Maya Pagni Barak give us a glimpse into the lives of lawyers who choose to work in the darkest corner of our criminal justice system: death penalty cases. Based on in-depth personal interviews with a cross-section of the nation’s top capital defense teams, the book explores the unusual few who voluntarily represent society’s ＂worst of the worst.＂

With a compassionate and careful eye, Gould and Barak chronicle the experiences of American lawyers, who-like soldiers or surgeons-operate under the highest of stakes, where verdicts have the power to either ＂take death off the table＂ or put clients on ＂the conveyor belt towards death.＂ These lawyers are a rare breed in a field that is otherwise seen as dirty work and in a system that is overburdened, under-resourced, and overshadowed by social, cultural, and political pressures.

Examining the ugliest side of our criminal justice system, Capital Defense offers an up-close perspective on the capital litigation process and its impact on the people who participate in it.

Jon B. Gould (Author)
Jon B. Gould is Dean of the School of Social Ecology and Professor of Criminology, Law and Society at the University of California, Irvine. He is the author of four books, including The Innocence Commission: Preventing Wrongful Convictions and Restoring the Criminal Justice System and Capital Defense: Inside the Lives of America’s Death Penalty Attorneys.

Maya Pagni Barak (Author)
Maya Pagni Barak is Associate Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice and an affiliate of Women’s and Gender Studies ​at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. She is the author of The Slow Violence of Immigration Court: Procedural Justice on Trial