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Nonfiction Just another evil act A COURAGEOUS FOOL  By Todd C. Peppers with Margaret A. Anderson 279 pp. Vanderbilt University Press  Reviewed by Marty Carlock This is a book about murder. Murders, actually, plural. They were all legal. Done by you and me. A Courageous Fool is about the death penalty, and the pain it exacts not only for the condemned but on all who participate. The courageous fool is Marie Deans, a woman who fought the death penalty in some of the states where it is most often applied. Not content with opposing it, Deans visited the men on death row, listened to them, urged them to appeal, reaffirmed their dignity and their existence as human beings. Marie Deans was likely not an easy person to hang out with. She smoked, talked incessantly, had no patience for those who disagreed with her. On Death Row she was somebody else; the men adored her, protected her. She saw the humanity deep in men who had committed hideous crimes. She wrote: “To me, the people who ...