The Last Lawyer: The Fight to Save Death Row Inmates

Understanding Health and Sickness Series

by John Temple

The Last Lawyer is the true, inside story of how an idealistic legal genius and his diverse band of investigators and fellow attorneys fought to overturn a client's final sentence. Ken Rose has handled more capital appeals cases than almost any other attorney in the United States. The Last Lawyer chronicles Rose's decade-long defense of Bo Jones, a North Carolina farmhand convicted of a 1987 murder. Rose called this his most frustrating case in twenty-five years, and it was one that received scant attention from judges or journalists. The Jones case bares the thorniest issues surrounding capital punishment. Inadequate legal counsel, mental retardation, mental illness, and sketchy witness testimony stymied Jones's original defense. Yet for many years, Rose's advocacy gained no traction, and Bo Jones came within three days of his execution. The book follows Rose through a decade of setbacks and small triumphs as he gradually unearthed the evidence he hoped would save his client's life. At the same time, Rose also single-handedly built a nonprofit law firm that became a major force in the death penalty debate raging across the South. The Last Lawyer offers unprecedented access to the inner workings of a capital defense team. Based on four-and-a half years of behind-the-scenes reporting by a journalism professor and nonfiction author, The Last Lawyer tells the unforgettable story of a lawyer's fight for justice.

Genres: True Crime, Nonfiction, Law

224 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 4, 2004

About the author

John Temple is a veteran investigative journalist whose books illuminate significant issues in American life.
His forthcoming book, Up in Arms, details Cliven and Ammon Bundy's multiple standoffs with the federal government. It will appear in June 2019.
Temple’s last book, American Pain: How a Young Felon and His Ring of Doctors Unleashed America’s Deadliest Drug Epidemic, was named a New York Post “Favorite Book of 2015” and was a 2016 Edgar Allan Poe Award nominee. American Pain chronicles how two young felons built the largest pill mill in the United States and also explains the roots of the opioid epidemic.
Temple also wrote The Last Lawyer: The Fight to Save Death Row Inmates (2009) and Deadhouse: Life in a Coroner’s Office (2005). The Last Lawyer won the Scribes Book Award from the American Society of Legal Writers.
Temple is a tenured journalism professor at the Reed College of Media at West Virginia University. He holds an MFA in nonfiction writing from the University of Pittsburgh. Prior to academia, Temple worked as a newspaper reporter. He currently lives in Morgantown, West Virginia with his wife and two sons. More information can be found at www.johntemplebooks.com.

Reviews

[♥ Sandi ❣ · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 stars

This is one of the best nonfiction books pertaining to wrongful convictions that I have ever read.

Ken Rose, head of the Center for Death Penalty Litigation, known as CDPL, in North Carolina, took on the case of Bo Jones in 1999, a prisoner on death row, for the murder of a man in 1987. He was granted a stay in Jones's execution 3 days before it was to take place.

The story then follows all the work performed and the problem's that existed in keeping Bo Jones alive for the next nine years. You meet co-counsel and investigators. You learn about prosecutors and witnesses. You are privy to what Bo himself does and doesn't do to help his cause. You read about the different judges who hear portions of his case over the years - those who are partial and those who are impartial.

This book makes you feel like you are riding in the pocket of the lawyer - hearing everything first hand. Feeling the disappointments, rejoicing in the advancements. The attorneys do not start out retrying this case, looking for innocence over guilt, they are just trying to get this man off death row, a reversal of opinion, putting Bo Jones in prison for life. However in the end it does come down to guilt or innocence.

Ken Rose and his team are exceptional people. People you would want on your side if you needed legal help. And John Temple, the author, had his thumb right on the mark as he witnessed and recounted the nine years that this team battled to save Bo Jones's life.

[Bob Schmitz · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Last Lawyer is the story of Ken Rose director of the Center for Death Penalty Litigation in Durham, NC and his and his teams defense of a convicted murderer, Bo Jones, on death row. I read the book because I knew Ken. Our kids went to school together and I knew he worked on death row cases but not that he was a towering figure in that field. He is so modest, humble and kind. It was wonderful to read that he was relentless and brave in his pursuit of justice for the people he represented. The book is one more story about the abuse of the police and justice system particularly as displayed in the rural South towards black men. Interesting quick read.

I had no idea that Ken went to West Point, (2 years - bad fit.) Nor did I know that North Carolina was at the forefront of sending people to death row behind only Florida, Texas and California (with much larger population) another sad superlative for our state. I had no idea that Ken had argued and won a case before the US Supreme Court, Stringer v. Black in 1991, nor that all his family were entrepreneurs and that one brother Stuart was chairman of Rex Stores earning $M's. Nor did I know that Ken's parents were opposed to his taking a low paying lawyers job. (They came around thankfully.) And finally I had no idea that Mark Kleinschmidt, who I knew as the mayor of Chapel Hill, worked with Ken on the Bo Jones case. Small world.

Ken is a wonderful guy and it is a interesting book.

[Dana · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was so insightful to see the death process from the inside. Well written and gut wrenching, it makes you rethink no matter which side of the issue you are on.

[Felicity · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the story of North Carolina's Center for Death Penalty Litigation (CDPL) ten year attempt to save convicted killer Bo Jones from North Carolina's death row. Temple is at pains to show how much work the lawyers do for little financial reward, and to paint this as as a story of good (the CDPL) vs. evil (the district attorney). So there is a lot of narrative about how many times the CDPL visited this person and that person and how many miles they drove, and how much photocopying they did, and which Subway they ate at for dinner. It's difficult to feel much of anything for Bo Jones, the convicted killer: he seems reluctant to let anyone, even his lawyers, get to know him and the claim that he is almost mentally retarded seems very close to the truth--as least as Temple presents it. But perhaps the most interesting thing about this whole book is that Bo's conviction hinges on the testimony (made five years after the murder) provided by Bo's girlfriend, an young African-American women with ten children, all fathered by different men. In any other context, society wouldn't give this woman another glance, but when it came to closing a case and sentencing a man to death, her testimony assumes a degree of credence it never otherwise would have.

[Mig · Rating 5 out of 5]

From Amazon:
The Last Lawyer is the true, inside story of how an idealistic legal genius and his diverse band of investigators and fellow attorneys fought to overturn a client's final sentence.

Ken Rose has handled more capital appeals cases than almost any other attorney in the United States. The Last Lawyer chronicles Rose's decade-long defense of Bo Jones, a North Carolina farmhand convicted of a 1987 murder. Rose called this his most frustrating case in twenty-five years, and it was one that received scant attention from judges or journalists. The Jones case bares the thorniest issues surrounding capital punishment. Inadequate legal counsel, mental retardation, mental illness, and sketchy witness testimony stymied Jones's original defense. Yet for many years, Rose's advocacy gained no traction, and Bo Jones came within three days of his execution.

Ken Rose is my neighbor and a hero in my eyes. Intriguing story about Ken's career and the untold stories of forgotten individuals on death row.

[Martha · Rating 5 out of 5]

A NC death row inmate finds justice and an overturned conviction after 13 years on death row - told from the attorney’s perspective - reads like a fiction novel. This is one of the few overturned cases resulting from ineffective counsel, rather than a DNA finding. The book shows how hard it is to get an appeal to look at the ineffective counsel issue - which is pretty rampant.

[Marianna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book. Very easy read for a non-fiction. I'm not sure if would convince anyone that the death penalty is wrong (I don't think that was its purpose anyway) but it lets the reader know about the people who sacrifice for others--even if the others don't care.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating, in-depth look at a capital post-conviction case that spanned more than a decade. Provided great insight on the legal prospective of defense attorneys in capital cases and the, at times, heartbreaking work they do.

[Suzanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting read. I had to keep reminding myself that this was non-fiction.

[Janet Warman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a journalist's true crime account of a team that works to get a death row inmate off of death row. It is compelling stuff.

[Dawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a decent book for research ID