“At the end of the day,” he wrote in a recent New York Times piece, “perhaps the best argument against capital punishment may be that it is an issue beyond the limited capacity of government to get things right.”

This opinion piece was featured just after Governor Ryan’s recent decision to pardon four Illinois death row inmates and commute the sentences of the rest to life in prison. Ryan acted in response to the findings of the death penalty commission, whose final report concluded that the death penalty as it currently exists in the state is not responsibly applied. The commission had recommended 85 reforms which would allow the death penalty to begin to operate fairly.

Turow is adamant that conclusions about the death penalty not be based upon limited responses, emotional or otherwise, to a single case. Possibly this was a part of why writing the novel, which is by its nature a somewhat abstracted exercise, contributed to his shift in opinion on the death penalty. By exploring the complicated emotions felt by the figures in Gandolph’s case, Turow was able to create a hypothetical situation in which to test his own feelings. It seems like a poster case for an increased reciprocity between the arts and politics.

Regarding such intersections, however, Turow recommends caution. “I think it was Darryl Zanuck who told one of his screenwriters, ‘If you want to send a message, use Western Union,’” Turow said.

Turow says that “the law . . . has been the subject of many monumental works going back to the trial of Socrates—but only because they have taken moral ambiguity as their subject.”

“Art is about ambiguity, conflict, complexity that resists the kinds of reductions of our experience that politics requires,” he says.

Nevertheless, Turow says he knows his work unavoidably carries a message. The final version of the novel is the result of at least one major choice about presentation and plot line which he says could have changed the tone of the book entirely and sent the wrong message—more detail might ruin the story. But Turow, in contrast to many others in his genre, does treat his writing as art, taking time in the mornings to write before practicing law in the afternoons at the Chicago branch of the international firm Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal.  

In fact, this former creative writing teacher says that becoming a lawyer was the big break in his literary career because of the way it changed his work. Being forced to argue a case in front of a diverse jury forced him to seriously consider the notion of accessibility, something he says he feels is lacking in much of what academics call “literature.”