John Temple’s latest non-fiction thriller continues to garner national attention.
Temple, an associate professor at West Virginia University’s P.I. Reed School of Journalism, was recently named the recipient of The American Society of Legal Writers Scribes 2010 Book Award American Society of Legal Writers Scribes 2010 Book Award, for his book, The Last Lawyer: The Fight to Save Death Row Inmates.
The award is presented to only one work per year and the organization has previously honored such books as A Civil Action by Jonathan Harr, The Defense Never Rests by F. Lee Bailey, and The Challenge: Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and the Fight over Presidential Power by Jonathan Mahler.
University Press of Mississippi, who published the book in November 2009, nominated Temple’s book for the award.
The Last Lawyer is the true story of an idealistic attorney, Ken Rose, and his diverse band of investigators and lawyers. The book chronicles Rose’s decade-long defense of Bo Jones, a North Carolina farmhand convicted of a 1987 murder.
Temple spent five years as a behind-the-scenes reporter for the book, following the case and the setbacks and triumphs Rose’s team faced as they gradually unearthed evidence to help save their client’s life.
Temple will be honored Aug. 7 at the Scribes’ annual meeting in San Francisco, which is held in conjunction with the American Bar Association’s annual conference.
His remarks will be published in the Scribes’ quarterly newsletter, The Scrivener.
Scribes: The American Society of Legal Writers was founded in 1953 to honor legal writers and encourage a “clear, succinct, and forceful style in legal writing.”
Read the official press release on WVU Today.