The Deserving: What the Lives of the Condemned Reveal About American Justice

“The first book I'm aware of to pull back the curtain on a life-saving field most have never heard of: mitigation.” --Sister Helen Prejean, from the foreword

Elizabeth Vartkessian works with criminal defense teams as a mitigation specialist. She isn't part of the Innocence Project; her clients are often legally guilty, and often of terrible crimes. Rather, her job is to spend hundreds of hours per case talking to the parents, siblings, teachers, and neighbors of a defendant, putting their cr...