David R. Dow is the Distinguished University Professor at the University of Houston Law Center and the Litigation Director at the Texas Defender Service, a non-profit legal aid corporation that represents death row inmates. Educated at Rice and Yale, Dow has represented more than one hundred death row inmates in their state and federal appeals. In addition to numerous scholarly publications, Dow's work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, The Progressive, and The Houston Chronicle, among others. "The Autobiography of an Execution" is his fifth book.