Author Scott Turow Visits UC College of Law

The University of Cincinnati College of Law community had a chance to hear from one of the most recognizable names in American legal and literary circles when author/attorney Scott Turow spoke at the college on Friday, Nov. 16.

Turow, author of eight best-selling novels, talked about his long and varied career before focusing in on his own personal journey of deliberation about the death penalty.

Upon introduction, he mused about a couple of little-known connections between himself and the UC College of Law. In 1983, when he was an assistant United States Attorney in Chicago, he co-authored what he jokingly called "the most dis-remembered piece of writing I ever did," an article for the University of Cincinnati Law Review on RICO forfeitures. Turow also has a more personal tie to the college – his girlfriend, Seattle-based attorney Deborah M. Nelson, is a 1993 graduate from the school.

Nelson, who was known as Deborah Willis when attending UC and is the immediate past-president of the Washington State Trial Lawyers Association, accompanied Turow on his visit and, among other highlights, got to share breakfast with the faculty member she recalls as her favorite professor, Tom Eisele.

Turow was also able to meet representatives of the Ohio Innocence Project, which is based out of the UC College of Law. Earlier this month on Court TV, a pilot episode of a series called "Justice Delayed" was shown with Turow as host, and one of the two cases in the show featured the work of the Ohio Innocence Project.

One of Turow’s most recent books is "Ultimate Punishment," which deals with the evolution of his views on capital punishment throughout his career.

Turow recalls graduating law school and starting his law career with the federal prosecutor’s office in Chicago, and having, at that time, ambivalent feelings about capital punishment. When one of his best friends ended up trying a capital case in state court, Turow recalls thinking "that what he was doing in seeking the death penalty was probably kind of an ugly necessity of our legal system."

By 1992, his views had not changed, even as he began pro bono work on behalf of Alejandro Hernandez, a man wrongly convicted of murder. Soon after, death penalty abolitionists asked him to speak up against the execution of notorious serial killer John Wayne Gacy.

Turow found that he could not.

"I studied the facts of the case and I began to think about what it meant to 34 families to have their sons or brothers disappear, to find out they had been torturned to death in ways that might have made the Marquis de Sade blush," said Turow. "I could not speak out against capital punishment in that case. I thought that my community had made a judgment that certainly struck me as reasonable."

It wasn’t until the year 2000, Turow said, that a series of events caused him to re-examine the subject.

Turow recounted how he was one of 14 people appointed to the Illinois Commission on Capital Punishment, established after then-Gov. George Ryan became so disturbed by the fact that 13 prisoners who had been on Illinois’ Death Row – including Turow’s client, Hernandez – had subsequently been exonerated that he put a moratorium on all executions and requested the commission to examine the overall system.

Turow did just that. "I was suddenly faced with the question of what reforms, if any, would make the Illinois capital punishment system fair and just," he told the UC audience.

It led him to completely rethink the underlying question about capital punishment. He compared Illinois’ practices to those in other states and he read the records on all the first-degree murder cases in the state.

"It began to dawn on me that I had been asking myself the wrong questions about capital punishment throughout my life," Turow said. "It is the same wrong question that I think most Americans ask themselves about capital punishment.

"The real question we should be asking ourselves is not whether there are exceptional, horrible cases like John Wayne Gacy that so stimulate our sense of moral outrage that the idea of taking a life may indeed be acceptable. The question is: Can you ever design as a lawyer a system that will reach only the right cases without also sweeping in the wrong cases?"

Turow then went on to speak about all the reasons people think we need a death penalty, and the shortcomings for each of those reasons, and then the many gaps in our justice system that will always keep us from having a uniform application of capital punishment.

"(The system) is, in fact, nothing more than a roulette wheel, and always will be," Turow argued. When you add in the extra pressure on law enforcement, the justice system and juries that come with looking for closure on the most heinous crimes in our society, the risks of unacceptable outcomes becomes too great.

Turow showed in his presentation the same great, direct communication skills that have helped him become such a popular writer.

"He was awesome," said second-year law student Emily Meier. "I’ve read (death penalty opponent) Sister Helen Prejean’s book, and even as great as she is, she can’t explain these points as well as he did today."

Another in attendance was Associate Professor of Legal Studies Ruth Edwards from UC’s College of Applied Science. "I’m always interested in the death penalty, so I wanted to hear what he had to say," she said. "A lot of the things he expressed were things that I’ve felt for a while. Once you’re gone, you’re gone – that’s for sure."

Added Mark Godsey, UC professor of law and faculty director for the Ohio Innocence Project: "What stood out to me is how even-handed he is about these issues. He speaks about them so well because he is able to put his arguments in clear, concise language."