Started: 4/5/07
Finished: 4/9/07
Year: 2003
Pages: 252
Genre: True Crime
Grade: C-
Reason for reading: grabbed it off the TBR shelf
Blurb (from book jacket): "Are innocent people being executed? Are death penalty cases being investigated and tried as if someone's life depended on it? Is capital punishment justice or revenge?
"Fuhrman seeks to answer these questions by investigating the death penalty in Oklahoma, a place where a 'hang 'em high' attitude of cowboy justice resulted in twenty-one executions in 2001, more than in any other state in the nation. The majority of these death penalty cases came from one jurisdiction, Oklahoma County, where legendary district attorney Bob Macy bragged about sending more people to death row than any other prosecutor, and police chemist Joyce Gilchrist was eventually fired for mismanaging the crime lab. These two figures loom large in Fuhrman's investigation.
"Examining police records, trial transcripts, and appellate decisions, and conducting hundreds of interviews, Fuhrman focuses his considerable investigative skills on more than a dozen of the most controversial Oklahoma death penalty cases, including two in which innocent men nearly lost their lives.
"When he began Death and Justice, Mark Fuhrman was firm believer in the death penalty What he saw in Oklahoma changed his mind. It may change yours."
Opinion: Well, it's an interesting look at Oklahoma and how an overzealous attorney and a chemist was unskilled, got together in several death penalty cases. I really did not like Fuhrman's writing style, but that could just be who he is, which is fine.
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