More On Defending The Damned

From The Chicago Daily Southtown:

Chicago writer Kevin Davis often wondered the same thing most people probably do about public defenders: How could they work so hard trying to keep some of society’s most vicious criminals out of prison or off Death Row?

Davis said public defenders called the common query the “cocktail party question,” and he wanted to get beyond the rote reply that they were performing the vital public service of protecting the constitutional rights of the accused.

A five-year search for a more meaningful answer resulted in Davis‘ book, “Defending the Damned: Inside Chicago’s Cook County Public Defenders Office,” which will be released in hardcover Tuesday by Simon & Schuster.

In an interview last week, Davis said the book will challenge the popular conception of public defenders as bleeding-heart apologists for nasty criminals.

“It’s not as simple as that,” he said. “They all have different motivations. I’m lucky these people let me into their world.”