DELSOHN, Gary 1952-

PERSONAL:

Born April 23, 1952. Education: University of Illinois, Springfield, M.A. (public affairs journalism).

ADDRESSES:

Agent—c/o Author Mail, Dutton, 375 Hudson St., New York, NY 10014. E-mail—gdelsohn@sacbee.com.

CAREER:

Writer. Denver Post, Denver, CO, reporter; Sacramento Bee, Sacramento, CA, senior writer, 1989—.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Knight fellowship, Stanford University; Alicia Patterson Foundation fellowship; Pulitzer Prize nomination.

WRITINGS:

(With Alex English) The English Language, Contemporary Books (Chicago, IL), 1986.

The Prosecutors: A Year in the Life of a District Attorney's Office, Dutton (New York, NY), 2003.

Contributor to periodicals and Web sites, including Denver Post, Rocky Mountain News (Denver, CO), and Salon.com.

SIDELIGHTS:

Gary Delsohn, whose first book is a coauthored autobiography of basketball player Alex English, took a year's leave from his job at the Sacramento Bee to observe the day-to-day activities within the offices of Sacramento County district attorney Jan Scully. Delsohn had covered criminal justice issues as a journalist, but his year of close observance was an eye-opener, as he observed the inner workings of an office that prosecuted more than 13,000 felonies a year. He concludes that although the system is not perfect, in nearly all cases justice is done.

Delsohn does document an instance where prosecutor Mark Curry won a murder verdict against a man who was later proved innocent when an informant came forward with the truth. He studies the impact of John Matthew O'Mara, the prosecutor in charge of homicide cases. The cases Delsohn describes involve gruesome murders, rapes, and a decades-old Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) bank robbery/murder case that involved heiress Patty Hearst.

Delsohn spells out the toll that criminal investigations exact on the men and women inside the district attorney's office, describes courtroom dramas that never made the papers, and comments on interdepartmental politics. Writing for Newsreview.com, Cosmo Garvin noted that the book "is more true-crime novel than exposé. The closest thing to a bombshell is Delsohn's account of a scandal in the public defender's office involving a defense attorney who allegedly was having a romantic affair with a Sacramento jail inmate accused of a brutal murder." Delsohn recounts how the couple had phone sex, even though they knew all calls in and out of the jail are recorded. "Densely written, the text reads like a mix of early Law and Order scripts and old-school urban history," commented a Kirkus Reviews critic.

Oregonian reviewer David Reinhard wrote that Delsohn "does not waste the eye-popping access he was granted.… This is a gripping insider account—the good, the bad and ugly, the ambitious, the all-too-human, and the gossipy." Reinhard said that "it's tempting to write that Delsohn was fortunate to have fascinating cases to follow in 200 … but luck has a habit of finding talented writers, prosecutors, and others who work hard." Seattle Times critic Steve Weinberg concluded that The Prosecutors is a "remarkable book."