Turow bases his opinions on his experiences as a prosecutor and, in his years after leaving the United States Attorney's Office in Chicago, working on behalf of death-row inmates, as well as his two years on Illinois's Commission on Capital Punishment, charged by then-Gov.

George Ryan with reviewing the state's death penalty system.

He finally concludes that "the pivotal question instead is whether a system of justice can be constructed that reaches on the rare, right cases, without also occasionally condemning the innocent or the undeserving," and reveals "[t]oday, I would still do as I did when Paul Simon asked whether Illinois should retain capital punishment.

Ultimate Punishment received the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights 2004 Book award given annually to a novelist who "most faithfully and forcefully reflects Robert F. Kennedy's purposes - his concern for the poor and the powerless, his struggle for honest and even-handed justice, his conviction that a decent society must assure all young people a fair chance, and his faith that a free democracy can act to remedy disparities of power and opportunity.

[3] Reviewing the book, The Independent newspaper in February 2004, Robert Verkaik said that Turow's "experiences as a young prosecutor and a death-row defence attorney have given him a unique insight into how the death penalty works in America" and further stated that "Although one always suspects Turow must be against the death penalty, he cleverly deploys the suspense of his fiction to raise doubts about his true position".