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Great Discussions

3/21/2013

Thanks to BookPeople, Austin's great indie bookstore, for hosting the reading earlier this week. We had a good crowd and some thoughtful questions during the Q & A. Also had a terrific time discussing the nuances of interviewing with the kindred spirits at the Texas After Violence Project, and a wonderful and inspiring meeting with members of Austin IN Connection, who then posted this on their organization's Facebook page:

AINC supported a small gathering this afternoon with Susannah Sheffer where she spoke about her book "Fighting For Their Lives." Not only is she deeply intelligent and humane, she is humble about what she has done - which is, simply, to listen thoughtfully to the experiences of capital defense attorneys and sensitively report back through the pages of her book. UNBELIEVABLY inspiring, important and highly relevant to psychotherapists or, really, anyone in the trenches tangling with the many faces of human suffering.

Getting to talk with others in those very trenches is arguably the best thing about publishing a book like this one. Thanks to all who made such discussion possible.

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Coming to Austin

3/13/2013

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If you are anywhere near Austin, Texas, I hope to see you at the reading, talk, and booksigning at BookPeople on Tuesday, March 19th at 7:00 PM.

While in Austin, I will also be speaking to a group of mental health professionals who are involved with Austin in Connection, and to the oral historians at the Texas After Violence Project. After that, I'll head to the Psychotherapy Networker Symposium in Washington, DC -- not to give a public talk but to listen to the high-quality presentations that the symposium offers each year.

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How it is

3/6/2013

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Jeffrey Gamso's review of Fighting for Their Lives on his blog "For the Defense" is exceptionally thoughtful -- really, it's as much an essay as a review -- and includes some of his own stories of defending clients facing the death penalty. Do check it out. Here's one brief quote:

Fighting for Their Lives isn't the only book about capital defense lawyers. There are, in fact, quite a lot. Most are told from the outside, by a writer who tells stories of heroic lawyers battling the system, fighting for their clients. They may try to dig into the personal, but they don't mostly get beyond the superficial anecdote. A few lawyers have written their own versions. But they tend toward war stories. Sheffer's book is personal. How it is to be who they are. ... Really, Sheffer's book stands alone, I think.

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Questions and Answers

3/5/2013

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Q & A with Steve Hall on his StandDown Texas Project blog! Here's an excerpt:

Q. What led you to write this book?

A. I am always interested in people’s internal, emotional experience, and in terms of the death penalty, most of my work has involved looking at, and writing about, its impact on various affected people – particularly murder victims’ family members and family members of people who have been executed. Curiosity about the effect on defense attorneys was sort of a natural outgrowth of that work. I knew that this was a pretty unexplored area of the death penalty landscape, and in fact as I proceeded with the interviews for the book, I learned even more vividly and powerfully how reluctant defense attorneys have been to talk openly about the emotional impact of their work. I’m interested in how people cope with loss and specifically in how people in helping professions -- people who devote themselves to trying to help and even save other people -- manage internally when that effort fails.

Read the whole thing.

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The effect on all involved

3/4/2013

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I appreciate the thoughtful review of FIghting for Their Lives in the current issue of Foreword magazine. Here are a couple of excerpts:

In this revealing analysis of the legal profession, researcher Susannah Sheffer interviews long-time capital defense attorneys with the goal of answering this question: How does it feel to know that your job is to save a person’s life?

Sheffer has written about and worked on death penalty-related issues for fifteen years. Here, she presents an informative and compelling description of the responsibility and personal anguish attorneys of death row clients feel about their role in the death penalty process.

And:

Sheffer’s insightful book will be of interest to all capital defense attorneys and others working in the judicial system, as well as to those who work on death penalty issues in other contexts, including politicians, journalists, and advocates. It will further appeal to readers working in high-pressure jobs and facing the same conflicting feelings about their own professions.

By so thoroughly depicting the mindset of a capital defense attorney, while still acknowledging opposing views, Sheffer presents a highly persuasive argument against the death penalty. Fighting for Their Lives serves to inform and also encourage readers to consider the effect the death penalty has on all involved in the process, as well as society at large.

Read the whole review.

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FFTL at Marquette Law School

3/4/2013

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Marquette Law School's conference on restorative justice and the ultimate penal sanction a couple of weeks ago included a panel on the impact on lasyers, and I was able to participate and to speak about Fighting for Their Lives. Here is a video; the lawyer panel starts at about 3:45.

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Great Discussions

Coming to Austin

How it is

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The effect on all involved

FFTL at Marquette Law School

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