May God Have Mercy by John C Tucker

May God Have Mercy by John C Tucker

In some states by law, in others by tradition, judges imposing a sentence of death complete the grim ritual with the words May God have mercy on your soul.

In 1982, in Grundy, Virginia, a young miner named Roger Coleman was sentenced to death for the murder of his sister-in-law. Ten years later, the sentence was carried out, despite the extraordinary efforts of Kitty Behan, a brilliant and dedicated young lawyer who devoted two years of her life to gathering evidence of Coleman's innocence, evidence so compelling that media around the world came to question the verdict. The courts, ruling on technicalities, refused to hear the new evidence and witnesses. Finally, the governor of Virginia ordered a lie-detector test to be administered on the morning of Coleman's scheduled execution, and in a chair that to Coleman surely looked like nothing so much as an electric chair.

In John Tucker's telling, this story is an emotional and unforgettable roller-coaster ride from the awful night of the crime to the equally awful night of the execution. Perhaps it was not Roger Coleman whose soul was in need of God's mercy, but the judges, prosecutors, and politicians who procured his death.

Before joining the Chicago legal firm Jenner and Block, John C. Tucker attended Princeton University and the University of Michigan Law School. He was elected to the American College of Trial Attorneys in 1974, and The Best Lawyers in America rated him one of the greatest criminal defense lawyers in the country in 1984. He is the author of the critically praised May God Have Mercy, a book on Virginian Roger Coleman's controversial execution. He now lives in Virginia with his law professor wife, Jayne Barnard.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780385332941
ISBN 10	0385332947
Title	May God Have Mercy
Author	John C Tucker
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group Inc
Year published	1998-08-10
Number of pages	368
Prizes	Short-listed for Edgar Allan Poe Awards (Fact Crime) 1998
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.