Thwarting Death

This book examines the lived experienes of death penalty defense lawyers and how they created a legal culture of resistance to the death penalty. It argues that an important social component of death penalty abolition in the state of Colorado was due to the efforts of capital defense attorneys. Specifically, it explores how the death penalty defense lawyers created and embraced a legal culture of resistance which compelled the attorneys to fight tenaciously in order to win life sentences for clients that had committed brutal homicides. A legal culture of resistance does not exist in a vacuum. Thwarting Death traces the lived experience of 15 death penalty defense lawyers from when they were kids all the way up through retirement to explain how a legal culture of resistance forms and lawyers operate within it after being established which in turn can have a massive influence on public policy outside of a courtroom; such as creating a social and political environment conducive to abolishing the death penalty.

Professor Pogrebin has his M.A. from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York, and Ph.D. from the University of Iowa. A nationally-recognized authority in the field of criminal justice, Dr. Pogrebin held faculty positions at Florida State University and the University of Iowa prior to joining SPA in 1976. His present interests lie in the areas of criminology and penology, sociology of law and organizations, administration of justice, deviant behavior, and qualitative research methods.