2004: "ULTIMATE PUNISHMENT", BY SCOTT TUROW

Judges: Walter Isaacson, Samantha Power, Alice Randall, Jim Sasser, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. and John Seigenthaler, Sr.

Grand Prize:
Ultimate Punishment, by Scott Turow

Distinguished Honor:
Death of Innocence, by Mamie Till-Mobley and Christopher Benson

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Scott Turow's Ultimate Punishment receives 24th Annual Robert F. Kennedy Book Award

Washington, D.C. The Robert F. Kennedy Memorial is pleased to announce the selection of Scott Turowís Ultimate Punishment as the winner of the 2004 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. Special recognition was given to Mamie Till-Mobley (posthumous) and Christopher Benson for Death of Innocence. Selected from a field of over 80 nominees, these books represent the issues that were of paramount concern to Robert Kennedy.

Ultimate Punishment is a provocative account of Turow's personal experience as a lawyer on either side of the death penalty debate. In Death of Innocence, with the aid of writer Christopher Benson, Mamie Till-Mobley recounts how her quiet, yet determined quest for justice after her son's brutal murder fueled the modern civil rights movement. RFK Book Award judge Alice Randall noted, in making the choice to honor Scott Turow's elegant, vivid, concise, and persuasive book, we honor both Robert F. Kennedy and Mamie Till, who in their time spoke elegantly, concisely, and persuasively to a nation in need of catalyst and counsel to find the ground of simple truth.