Bringing ideas together

I wrote a couple of months ago about some readers' assumptions that the lawyers in Fighting for Their Lives work mostly to exonerate clients who have been wrongfully convicted. The issue of wrongful conviction and innocence has gotten a lot of public attention, relative to other issues associated with the death penalty, and I suspect it's also harder for people to imagine why attorneys would fight so hard for the lives of clients when innocence is not the issue. So I'm always pleased when a reviewer or reader recognizes and notes this aspect of the book's material. 

Meanwhile, in my other line of work I spend a lot of time with teenagers, sometimes even discussing exactly these issues, as I do when I facilitate a "Harm and Punishment" discussion group at North Star. I know that young people can care deeply and reflect thoughtfully about questions of victims and offenders and how respond when people have been harmed or caused harm.


Mark Flowers' review of Fighting for Their Lives in School LIbrary Journal's Adult Books 4 Teens blog brings together both of these ideas: he points out that capital defense attorneys don't only work to exonerate the innocent, and he explains why he thinks Fighting for Their Lives is a good book for teenagers.  I'm grateful to him for doing so.