Kevin Davis

"My brain made me do it." Sounds like a ridiculous defense but, with this book, Kevin Davis shows us the science making that phrase a real possibility.

While I'm tempted to rehash some of the excellent material within, because it's a really fun topic to discuss, I'll instead stick to my thoughts on the book in general. First, the material is impeccably researched. The author builds from a solid base of one particular case, with a man who, after murdering his wife, was found to have an show more enormous cyst on his brain. From there, we explore what it means to be sane, and is the question of sanity different from being criminally responsible?

In reading this book, it's difficult not to question the issue of free will. How much of our behavior is governed by the inner workings of our brains? We start to wonder where the line sits between choice and biologically-governed behavior.

Kevin Davis's writing is thoroughly engaging. This isn't a dry, textbook kind of read. Yet, it's also not light pop science. The content is compelling and thought-provoking. Davis doesn't claim to have all the answers, and he doesn't lead us in any specific direction. He gives us room to ponder the questions and reach our own conclusions about a topic that is likely to become more controversial over the years.

*I was provided with an advance copy by the publisher, via Amazon Vine, in exchange for my honest review.* show less

Welcome to Murder Task Force, the elite division of the Chicago office of public defenders. Attorneys on this force take on the city's worst cases as clients--serial killers, couples who kill their babies, teenagers who kill cops. And they all believe strongly in what they're doing.

Television almost never portrays PDs accurately; they're either inundated with too many cases or incompetent or both. But Davis shows that the attorneys with the Murder Task Force are highly trained and passionate show more about their jobs. They're fighters. They kind of have to be, since everyone, sometimes even their own clients, roil with hatred for them. As for the public, it has nothing but contempt for them.

While Davis offers details of several different cases (he opens with a riveting, if nauseating, one), he mainly follows the case of Aloysius Oliver, a then-teenager accused of killing Chicago cop Eric Lee. Not only did Davis show the inner workings of the case, he balanced the views of Lee's family and Oliver's family nicely. I think he also showed how easy it is for everyone--politicians, the public, the victim's family--to crowd cases with their own agendas. At one point, then-Mayor Daley encouraged a jury to give Oliver the death penalty, even though the jury was supposed to be sequestered from all news media of the case. Well, wink wink nod nod, I guess.

Davis also shows the inner workings of the public defender's office and just how taxing the job can be on those who work in it. Two jobs I had no idea existed: investigators and mitigators for the defense. Investigators are employed to see just how well the stories of the case shake out, and mitigators piece together facts and stories of the perp's lives in order to mitigate a sentence. When the death penalty was in effect in Illinois, mitigators were used to help perps get life instead of the death penalty.

All in all, an engaging, informative read. show less

The subtitle tells what this is about: "Inside Chicago's Cook County Public Defender's Office," and it is utterly fascinating. It has an amazing woman at the center of it - what a character! - who pulls out all the stops to defend some truly awful people, as well as some who aren't. The writer has done an amazing job of reporting the story so it reads like a novel, but never straying from good journalism into making things up. I had never heard of this book, but I bumped into when searching show more for something else and am really glad I did. It's not for the faint of heart. Some of the crimes that go through that courthouse make the most gruesome mystery pale in comparison. But through it all the message is clear that we owe PDs a debt of gratitude for taking on a job that most people despise and giving it their best regardless of what they think of their clients.

I wonder if the author will turn to crime fiction - three of the five blurbs on the cover are from crime fiction authors. If he does, I'm there. show less

Chicago's a good place to follow crime and punishment. My shelf includes not only Chicago mystery authors but also nonfiction courthouse stories from Steve Bogira and John Conroy. So I'm surprised I missed Kevin Davis' 2007 book on public defenders till we both wound up working at the same place. Davis displays a novelist's pacing in following an accused cop killer's case when Illinois' death penalty was still in force. Cook County provides a colorful cast in the elite squad known as the show more public defender's Murder Task Force. In many of their cases a life sentence was a victory. Davis unravels the reasons they kept plugging away. show less