By Vikas Turakhia

Near the beginning of The Autobiography of an Execution, David R. Dow explains, "Because I used to support the death penalty, it's not so hard for me to have sympathy for the misguided souls who still do."

Working out of Houston, where he teaches law, Dow has represented more than 100 Texas death-row inmates. Most he hasn't liked, many have committed monstrous crimes, yet he writes, "If you have reservations about supporting a racist, classist, unprincipled regime . . . then the death-penalty system we have here in America will embarrass you to no end."

This clear, firm book is much more than a legal argument. It's about rising to do work each morning that will almost invariably fail, in the teeth of knowing that people die because "their lawyers neglect to dot the i's or cross the t's."

It's also about the desperation of such work when the client is innocent, as Dow concludes for seven men he represented. His book's emotional resonance comes from the toll of this principled work on the author, his wife and young son.

After a lunchtime phone call about missing an outing with his boy, Dow wonders, "Why is it that when my six-year-old son says, Okay, Dada, I feel like my entire life is a waste of time?"

"The Autobiography of an Execution" is a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle award.

http://www.cleveland.com/books/index...biography.html