"This is a remarkable book. It chronicles the 25 year journey of Philip Workman through what US Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun termed 'the machinery of death'. It is the most detailed, intimate and complete look at a death row prisoner that I have encountered. The story is told through Ingle's eyes as Workman's pastor; the perspective of another condemned prisoner; and courtesy of the Tennessee Public Records Act, the viewpoint of the state officials who colluded to see that Workman was executed despite MORE THAN AMPLE EVIDENCE that he did not murder the police officer who he was convicted of killing. A memoir such as this is wrenching for it raises fundamental questions about our moral fabric as a nation. What does it mean to kill people, in our names, who do not kill people and are not eligible for the death penalty? These and other questions are addressed in the book as the reader descends with Philip Workman into the Inferno. It is a journey, like Dante's in the original Inferno, that will leave your soul transformed." --Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking
The Inferno
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
By asmithgate
Format:Paperback
I don't have the gumption to visit prisoners in jail or prison. But reading Rev. Joe Ingle's The Inferno, I made one visit after another with him. His account of Philip Workman's death row experience is non-fiction, yet unbelievably bizarre. Is he guilty of the crime or not? This isn't Law and Order or CSI on TV. Think Franz Kafka. Whether you're an attorney, judge, police officer, state governor, student of the American judicial system, or curious citizen (like me), you'll want to take this "fantastic journey" into Dante's circles of hell-on-earth. Truth is stranger then fiction, indeed.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
By Mikey
Format:Paperback
No one can read this book and still support the death penalty. I was ambivalent and hadn't thought about it much, but this book really got me thinking. It really humanizes death row inmates.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
By reellies
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Joe Ingle has written a searing account of death row inmate Philip Workman's life on death row, his multiple dates with the electric chair and the needle, the blatant injustice of his conviction, and Ingle's own descent into the purgatory of Workman's ensnarement. The book is compassionate, heartbreaking, immediate and makes the reader infuriated with the powers that be in the state of Tennessee and beyond. He calls his book a Southern morality tale and Workman's case is suffused with all the vestiges of the Old South, the cronyism, the unthinking thirst for vengeance, and the political pandering. But such a travesty of justice is not exclusive to Tennessee or the South. Ingle, Workman's spiritual advisor, has brought us a cautionary saga that goes beyond head-shaking to a clear indictment of the "killing machinery" that finally murdered, "legally," a man who was innocent of the crime of killing a cop. This is a must read for anyone who thinks they've seen it all with the missteps of the "modern" death penalty.
