Prairie Defender: The Murder Trials of Abraham Lincoln - Hardcover

Sr., George R. Dekle

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0809335972 ISBN 13: 9780809335978

Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press, 2017

Synopsis

The conventional wisdom says that most of Lincoln's practice involved collecting debt and representing railroads; that he only practiced law as a platform for his political career; that criminal law was only a minuscule part of his practice; and that he was particularly bad at defending homicide cases. A survey of Lincoln's murder cases demonstrates that he was first and foremost a trial lawyer, that the trial of criminal cases was an important part of his practice, and that he was not only a very good criminal trial lawyer, he was very capable of defending murder cases. Dekle devotes a chapter to each of Lincoln's well-documented criminal cases, paying particular attention to homicide cases. He consolidates cases for which we have little reference material into a single chapter and ends with an overall assessment of Lincoln as a criminal trial lawyer.

About this title

About the Author

For thirty years, George R. Dekle, Sr., worked as an assistant state attorney in the Third Judicial Circuit of Florida, where he prosecuted hundreds of homicide cases, and for the past ten years he served as the director of the prosecution clinic at the University of Florida Law School. He is the author of The Last Murder: The Investigation, Prosecution, and Execution of Ted Bundy and Abraham Lincoln's Most Famous Case: The Almanac Trial.

Edition details

• Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0809335972
• ISBN 13: 9780809335978
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 248