DEFENDING THE DAMNED - Inside Chicago's Cook County Public Defender's Office by Kevin Davis. New York: Atria Books/Simon and Schuster, 2007; 800-456-6798; David.Brown@simonandschuster.com. 308+xii pages. $25.00 hardcover, ISBN 978-0-7432-7093-9. index.
Kevin Davis's intellectual curiosity and witness make for an absorbing, elucidating tale about the lawyers at the Chicago Cook County Public Defender's Office. The field of criminology and the varied individuals from accused criminals to their public defenders, prosecutors, judges, and ordinary citizens who become involved in the criminal justice system one way or another are this award-winning journalist's chosen subject matter. Davis is a recipient of a Robert F. Kennedy Award for outstanding journalism who has written for USA Today, the Chicago Tribune, Crain's Chicago Business and other prominent periodicals as well as legal journals.
While at a particularly gruesome murder trial, Davis became gripped by the question of "how [the public defender] and her...colleagues were able to represent clients accused of such horrible crimes day after day, year after year, while keeping a safe emotional distance and preserving their sanity." He got into the position of being able to witness how they did this by being given unprecedented access to the attorneys, related personnel, and activity of the Cook County Public Defender's Office. And he availed himself as much as possible to relevant public documents and conducted interviews with both relatives of victims and the accused, among others.
A central figure is the public defender Marijane Placek, "fifty-four years old [with] bobbed hair...dyed golden blond with streaked highlights" given to wearing "snakeskin cowboy boots...when she wanted to look like a gunslinger." Placek is the lead public defender in the case of the murder of an undercover police officer--a case which allows Davis to give much attention also to the prosecutors and the police which are other necessary parts of the criminal justice system. In such a case of a murder of a police officer, prosecutors predictably try to "steal the flag," in the words of the public defenders' Murder Task Force chief Shelton Green; which means, they'll try to play up the normal public sympathy toward police officers to weigh the trial, including a sentence, heavily against the accused.
With a novelist's eye and human interest and a professional journalist's interest in and grasp of the law, Davis writes a consummate example of today's popular genre of creative nonfiction which casts a beam of light into one of democratic society's most disturbing areas and uncomfortable responsibilities.
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