Back from the dead : one woman's search for the men who walked off America's death row / Joan M. Cheever

Includes bibliographical references (p. 299-301) and index.

A date with death -- A "visit" from Walter -- Winners of America's 1972 death row lottery -- Class of '72: where are you? -- A dead man walking and talking -- From a cell of law books to a library of one -- Once a con. Always? -- The innocents: Pitts and Lee -- "Pops": the oldest member of the class -- A promise to keep -- A report card -- A promise to kill again -- A killer's 32-year Christmas shopping trip -- Finding Furman -- Finding forgiveness.

This volume, a godsend for opponents of capital punishment, indicates that there is an even chance that inmates spared the death penalty can be rehabilitated. After the Supreme Court ruled in Furman v. Georgia (1972) that the death penalty was unconstitutional, 589 murderers and rapists were released from death row and into the general prison population. (New laws upheld the death penalty in 1976.) About half of these men were eventually released; Cheever, a legal affairs journalist who trained as a lawyer, found and interviewed 125 of them. Their personal stories feature both redemption and dismal failure but do show that rehabilitation is possible even among the worst cases. Two other trains of thought run through Cheever's text. First, she was determined to meet Furman, the man behind the 1972 legal decision, and her search for him deep into Mississippi reads like an epic tale. Finally, going back to her unsuccessful legal defense of a man named Walter Williams, whose 1997 execution for murder started her on her odyssey, Cheever hunts down the mother of the victim.