Ken Rose with the Center for Death Penalty Litigation in Durham, North Carolina has made death cases his life’s work, and is the central figure in John Temple’s new book, The Last Lawyer. With a journalist’s nose for truth and a novelist’s ear for language, Temple tracks the fifteen-year fight to save Bo Jones [WARNING: SPOILERS] from the executioner’s needle. Along the way we are confronted with nearly every flaw in the American capital punishment system — incompetent defense attorneys; a trial prosecutor who doubted his own case but whose hands were tied by the system; a judge whose attitude toward  post-conviction motions ranged from indifferent to hostile; a pugnacious Assistant Attorney General determined to fight on toward death because she can; and a client, mentally challenged and delusional, who never quite seemed to understand what was happening, and who stood on the edge of the abyss — always in danger of unraveling the threads of his own case.

Throughout the book, Temple retains the journalist’s detachment — neither praising the lawyers of the CDPL nor condemning the lawyers for the State. That Ken Rose and his team emerge as heroes is tribute to the strength of their work and convictions. The lawyers of the CDPL take on incredibly unpopular causes for little money, and find the resolve to press on despite the long odds against them.

The Last Lawyer is a fast read that is both entertaining and inspirational, and serves to remind us in the criminal defense bar why we fight, and why we need to keep fighting. As Ken Rose’s mentor advised him early in his career, Represent your broke death row client like you were representing Coca-Cola. Considering how many defense attorneys half-heartedly fake their way through cases, it is a lesson I wish more of us had learned.