The Death Penalty

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Let the Lord Sort Them

Maurice Chammah
Let the Lord Sort Them Book PDF

Author : Maurice Chammah
Publisher : Crown
Page : 369 pages
File Size : 47,7 Mb
Release : 2022-01-18
Category : Law
ISBN : 9781524760281

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Let the Lord Sort Them by Maurice Chammah Pdf

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE • A deeply reported, searingly honest portrait of the death penalty in Texas—and what it tells us about crime and punishment in America “If you’re one of those people who despair that nothing changes, and dream that something can, this is a story of how it does.”—Anand Giridharadas, The New York Times Book Review WINNER OF THE J. ANTHONY LUKAS AWARD In 1972, the United States Supreme Court made a surprising ruling: the country’s death penalty system violated the Constitution. The backlash was swift, especially in Texas, where executions were considered part of the cultural fabric, and a dark history of lynching was masked by gauzy visions of a tough-on-crime frontier. When executions resumed, Texas quickly became the nationwide leader in carrying out the punishment. Then, amid a larger wave of criminal justice reform, came the death penalty’s decline, a trend so durable that even in Texas the punishment appears again close to extinction. In Let the Lord Sort Them, Maurice Chammah charts the rise and fall of capital punishment through the eyes of those it touched. We meet Elsa Alcala, the orphaned daughter of a Mexican American family who found her calling as a prosecutor in the nation’s death penalty capital, before becoming a judge on the state’s highest court. We meet Danalynn Recer, a lawyer who became obsessively devoted to unearthing the life stories of men who committed terrible crimes, and fought for mercy in courtrooms across the state. We meet death row prisoners—many of them once-famous figures like Henry Lee Lucas, Gary Graham, and Karla Faye Tucker—along with their families and the families of their victims. And we meet the executioners, who struggle openly with what society has asked them to do. In tracing these interconnected lives against the rise of mass incarceration in Texas and the country as a whole, Chammah explores what the persistence of the death penalty tells us about forgiveness and retribution, fairness and justice, history and myth. Written with intimacy and grace, Let the Lord Sort Them is the definitive portrait of a particularly American institution.

Death Penalty and Sex Murder in Canadian History

Carolyn Strange
Death Penalty and Sex Murder in Canadian History Book PDF

Author : Carolyn Strange
Publisher : University of Toronto Press
Page : 382 pages
File Size : 40,5 Mb
Release : 2020
Category : History
ISBN : 9781487508371

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Death Penalty and Sex Murder in Canadian History by Carolyn Strange Pdf

This is the first historical study to examine changing perceptions of sexual murder and the treatment of sex killers while the death penalty was in effect in Canada.

End of Its Rope

Brandon Garrett
End of Its Rope Book PDF

Author : Brandon Garrett
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 343 pages
File Size : 53,9 Mb
Release : 2017-09-25
Category : History
ISBN : 9780674970991

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End of Its Rope by Brandon Garrett Pdf

Today, death sentences in the U.S. are as rare as lightning strikes. Brandon Garrett shows us the reasons why, and explains what the failed death penalty experiment teaches about the effect of inept lawyering, overzealous prosecution, race discrimination, wrongful convictions, and excessive punishments throughout the criminal justice system.

The Death Penalty as Torture

John D. Bessler
The Death Penalty as Torture Book PDF

Author : John D. Bessler
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 44,7 Mb
Release : 2017
Category : Capital punishment
ISBN : 1611639263

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The Death Penalty as Torture by John D. Bessler Pdf

The Death Penalty as Torture: From the Dark Ages to Abolition was named a Bronze Medalist in the World History category of the Independent Publisher Book Awards and a finalist in the Eric Hoffer Book Awards (2018). During the Dark Ages and the Renaissance, Europe's monarchs often resorted to torture and executions. The pain inflicted by instruments of torture--from the thumbscrew and the rack to the Inquisition's tools of torment--was eclipsed only by horrific methods of execution, from breaking on the wheel and crucifixion to drawing and quartering and burning at the stake. The English "Bloody Code" made more than 200 crimes punishable by death, and judicial torture--expressly authorized by law and used to extract confessions--permeated continental European legal systems. Judges regularly imposed death sentences and other harsh corporal punishments, from the stocks and the pillory, to branding and ear cropping, to lashes at public whipping posts. In the Enlightenment, jurists and writers questioned the efficacy of torture and capital punishment. In 1764, the Italian philosopher Cesare Beccaria--the father of the world's anti-death penalty movement--condemned both practices. And Montesquieu, like Beccaria and others, concluded that any punishment that goes beyond absolute necessity is tyrannical. Traditionally, torture and executions have been viewed in separate legal silos, with countries renouncing acts of torture while simultaneously using capital punishment. The UN Convention Against Torture strictly prohibits physical or psychological torture; not even war or threat of war can be invoked to justify it. But under the guise of "lawful sanctions," some countries continue to carry out executions even though they bear the indicia of torture. In The Death Penalty as Torture, Prof. John Bessler argues that death sentences and executions are medieval relics. In a world in which "mock" or simulated executions, as well as a host of other non-lethal acts, are already considered to be torturous, he contends that death sentences and executions should be classified under the rubric of torture. Unlike in the Middle Ages, penitentiaries--one of the products of the Enlightenment--now exist throughout the globe to house violent offenders. With the rise of life without parole sentences, and with more than four of five nations no longer using executions, The Death Penalty as Torture calls for the recognition of a peremptory, international law norm against the death penalty's use.

The Death Penalty, Volume II

Jacques Derrida
The Death Penalty Volume II Book PDF

Author : Jacques Derrida
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 2017-05-31
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780226410821

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The Death Penalty, Volume II by Jacques Derrida Pdf

"In this newest installment in Chicagos series of Jacques Derridas seminars, the renowned philosopher attempts one of his most ambitious goals: the first truly philosophical argument against the death penalty. While much has been written against the death penalty, Derrida contends that Western philosophy is massively, if not always overtly, complicit with a logic in which a sovereign state has the right to take a life. Haunted by this notion, he turns to the key places where such logic has been established - and to the place it has been most effectively challenged: literature. With his signature genius and patient yet dazzling readings of an impressive breadth of texts, Derrida examines everything from the Bible to Plato to Camus to Jean Genet, with special attention to Kant and postWorld War II juridical texts, to draw the landscape of death penalty discourses. Keeping clearly in view the death rows and execution chambers of the United States, he shows how arguments surrounding cruel and unusual punishment depend on what he calls an 'anesthesial logic, ' which has also driven the development of death penalty technology from the French guillotine to lethal injection. Confronting a demand for philosophical rigor, he pursues provocative analyses of the shortcomings of abolitionist discourse. Above all, he argues that the death penalty and its attendant technologies are products of a desire to put an end to one of the most fundamental qualities of our finite existence: the radical uncertainty of when we will die. Arriving at a critical juncture in history - especially in the United States, one of the last Christian-inspired democracies to resist abolition - The Death Penalty is both a timely response to an important ethical debate and a timeless addition to Derridas esteemed body of work"--Unedited summary from book jacket.

The Politics of the Death Penalty in Countries in Transition

Madoka Futamura,Nadia Bernaz
The Politics of the Death Penalty in Countries in Transition Book PDF

Author : Madoka Futamura,Nadia Bernaz
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 236 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 2013-08-15
Category : Law
ISBN : 9781134066711

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The Politics of the Death Penalty in Countries in Transition by Madoka Futamura,Nadia Bernaz Pdf

The increase in the number of countries that have abolished the death penalty since the end of the Second World War shows a steady trend towards worldwide abolition of capital punishment. This book focuses on the political and legal issues raised by the death penalty in "countries in transition", understood as countries that have transitioned or are transitioning from conflict to peace, or from authoritarianism to democracy. In such countries, the politics that surround retaining or abolishing the death penalty are embedded in complex state-building processes. In this context, Madoka Futamura and Nadia Bernaz bring together the work of leading researchers of international law, human rights, transitional justice, and international politics in order to explore the social, political and legal factors that shape decisions on the death penalty, whether this leads to its abolition, reinstatement or perpetuation. Covering a diverse range of transitional processes in Asia, Africa, Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East, The Politics of the Death Penalty in Countries in Transition offers a broad evaluation of countries whose death penalty policies have rarely been studied. The book would be useful to human rights researchers and international lawyers, in demonstrating how transition and transformation, ‘provide the catalyst for several of interrelated developments of which one is the reduction and elimination of capital punishment’.

A Descending Spiral

Marc Bookman
A Descending Spiral Book PDF

Author : Marc Bookman
Publisher : The New Press
Page : 237 pages
File Size : 49,6 Mb
Release : 2021-06-15
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781620976593

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A Descending Spiral by Marc Bookman Pdf

Powerful, wry essays offering modern takes on a primitive practice, from one of our most widely read death penalty abolitionists As Ruth Bader Ginsburg has noted, people who are well represented at trial rarely get the death penalty. But as Marc Bookman shows in a dozen brilliant essays, the problems with capital punishment run far deeper than just bad representation. Exploring prosecutorial misconduct, racist judges and jurors, drunken lawyering, and executing the innocent and the mentally ill, these essays demonstrate that precious few people on trial for their lives get the fair trial the Constitution demands. Today, death penalty cases continue to capture the hearts, minds, and eblasts of progressives of all stripes—including the rich and famous (see Kim Kardashian’s advocacy)—but few people with firsthand knowledge of America’s “injustice system” have the literary chops to bring death penalty stories to life. Enter Marc Bookman. With a voice that is both literary and journalistic, the veteran capital defense lawyer and seven-time Best American Essays “notable” author exposes the dark absurdities and fatal inanities that undermine the logic of the death penalty wherever it still exists. In essays that cover seemingly “ordinary” capital cases over the last thirty years, Bookman shows how violent crime brings out our worst human instincts—revenge, fear, retribution, and prejudice. Combining these emotions with the criminal legal system’s weaknesses—purposely ineffective, arbitrary, or widely infected with racism and misogyny—is a recipe for injustice. Bookman has been charming and educating readers in the pages of The Atlantic, Mother Jones, and Slate for years. His wit and wisdom are now collected and preserved in A Descending Spiral.

Deterrence and the Death Penalty

National Research Council,Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education,Committee on Law and Justice,Committee on Deterrence and the Death Penalty
Deterrence and the Death Penalty Book PDF

Author : National Research Council,Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education,Committee on Law and Justice,Committee on Deterrence and the Death Penalty
Publisher : National Academies Press
Page : 144 pages
File Size : 42,9 Mb
Release : 2012-05-26
Category : Law
ISBN : 9780309254168

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Deterrence and the Death Penalty by National Research Council,Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education,Committee on Law and Justice,Committee on Deterrence and the Death Penalty Pdf

Many studies during the past few decades have sought to determine whether the death penalty has any deterrent effect on homicide rates. Researchers have reached widely varying, even contradictory, conclusions. Some studies have concluded that the threat of capital punishment deters murders, saving large numbers of lives; other studies have concluded that executions actually increase homicides; still others, that executions have no effect on murder rates. Commentary among researchers, advocates, and policymakers on the scientific validity of the findings has sometimes been acrimonious. Against this backdrop, the National Research Council report Deterrence and the Death Penalty assesses whether the available evidence provides a scientific basis for answering questions of if and how the death penalty affects homicide rates. This new report from the Committee on Law and Justice concludes that research to date on the effect of capital punishment on homicide rates is not useful in determining whether the death penalty increases, decreases, or has no effect on these rates. The key question is whether capital punishment is less or more effective as a deterrent than alternative punishments, such as a life sentence without the possibility of parole. Yet none of the research that has been done accounted for the possible effect of noncapital punishments on homicide rates. The report recommends new avenues of research that may provide broader insight into any deterrent effects from both capital and noncapital punishments.

The Death Penalty

Brandon Garrett,Lee Kovarsky
The Death Penalty Book PDF

Author : Brandon Garrett,Lee Kovarsky
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 40,5 Mb
Release : 2018
Category : Capital punishment
ISBN : 1634603214

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The Death Penalty by Brandon Garrett,Lee Kovarsky Pdf

Softbound - New, softbound print book.

Arbitrary Death

Rick Unklesbay
Arbitrary Death Book PDF

Author : Rick Unklesbay
Publisher : Wheatmark, Inc.
Page : 175 pages
File Size : 43,8 Mb
Release : 2019-05-10
Category : Law
ISBN : 9781627876810

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Arbitrary Death by Rick Unklesbay Pdf

Over a career spanning nearly four decades, Rick Unklesbay has tried over one hundred murder cases before juries that ended with sixteen men and women receiving the death sentence. Arbitrary Death depicts some of the most horrific murders in Tucson, Arizona, the author's prosecution of those cases, and how the death penalty was applied. It provides the framework to answer the questions: Why is America the only Western country to still use the death penalty? Can a human-run system treat those cases fairly and avoid unconstitutional arbitrariness? It is an insider's view from someone who has spent decades prosecuting murder cases and who now argues that the death penalty doesn't work and our system is fundamentally flawed. With a rational, balanced approach, Unklesbay depicts cases that represent how different parts of the criminal justice system are responsible for the arbitrary nature of the death penalty and work against the fair application of the law. The prosecution, trial courts, juries, and appellate courts all play a part in what ultimately is a roll of the dice as to whether a defendant lives or dies. Arbitrary Death is for anyone who wonders why and when its government seeks to legally take the life of one of its citizens. It will have you questioning whether you can support a system that applies death as an arbitrary punishment -- and often decades after the sentence was given.

Lethal State

Seth Kotch
Lethal State Book PDF

Author : Seth Kotch
Publisher : UNC Press Books
Page : 321 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 2019-01-10
Category : History
ISBN : 9781469649887

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Lethal State by Seth Kotch Pdf

For years, American states have tinkered with the machinery of death, seeking to align capital punishment with evolving social standards and public will. Against this backdrop, North Carolina had long stood out as a prolific executioner with harsh mandatory sentencing statutes. But as the state sought to remake its image as modern and business-progressive in the early twentieth century, the question of execution preoccupied lawmakers, reformers, and state boosters alike. In this book, Seth Kotch recounts the history of the death penalty in North Carolina from its colonial origins to the present. He tracks the attempts to reform and sanitize the administration of death in a state as dedicated to its image as it was to rigid racial hierarchies. Through this lens, Lethal State helps explain not only Americans' deep and growing uncertainty about the death penalty but also their commitment to it. Kotch argues that Jim Crow justice continued to reign in the guise of a modernizing, orderly state and offers essential insight into the relationship between race, violence, and power in North Carolina. The history of capital punishment in North Carolina, as in other states wrestling with similar issues, emerges as one of state-building through lethal punishment.

Slavery and the Death Penalty

Bharat Malkani
Slavery and the Death Penalty Book PDF

Author : Bharat Malkani
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 232 pages
File Size : 53,5 Mb
Release : 2018-05-16
Category : Law
ISBN : 9781317054429

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Slavery and the Death Penalty by Bharat Malkani Pdf

It has long been acknowledged that the death penalty in the United States of America has been shaped by the country’s history of slavery and racial violence, but this book considers the lesser-explored relationship between the two practices’ respective abolitionist movements. The book explains how the historical and conceptual links between slavery and capital punishment have both helped and hindered efforts to end capital punishment. The comparative study also sheds light on the nature of such efforts, and offers lessons for how death penalty abolitionism should proceed in future. Using the history of slavery and abolition, it is argued that anti-death penalty efforts should be premised on the ideologies of the radical slavery abolitionists.

Debating the Death Penalty

Hugo Adam Bedau,Paul G. Cassell
Debating the Death Penalty Book PDF

Author : Hugo Adam Bedau,Paul G. Cassell
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 260 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 2005-03-24
Category : History
ISBN : 0195179803

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Debating the Death Penalty by Hugo Adam Bedau,Paul G. Cassell Pdf

Experts on both side of the issue speak out both for and against capital punishment and the rationale behind their individual beliefs.

13 Ways of Looking at the Death Penalty

Mario Marazziti
13 Ways of Looking at the Death Penalty Book PDF

Author : Mario Marazziti
Publisher : Seven Stories Press
Page : 224 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 2015-03-24
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781609805685

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13 Ways of Looking at the Death Penalty by Mario Marazziti Pdf

Nation states and communities throughout the world have reached certain decisions about capital punishment: It is the destruction of human life. It is ineffective as a deterrent for crime. It is an instrument the state uses to contain or eliminate its political adversaries. It is a tool of “justice” that disproportionality affects religious, social, and racial minorities. It is a sanction that cannot be fixed if unjustly applied. Yet the United States—along with countries notorious for human rights abuse—remains an advocate for the death penalty. In these thirteen pieces, Mario Marazziti exposes the profound inhumanity and irrationality of the death penalty in this country, and urges us to join virtually every other industrialized democracy in rendering capital punishment an abandoned practice belonging to a crueler time in human history. A polemical book, yes, yet one that brings together a wide range of stories to compel the heart as well the mind.

The Death Penalty

Ernest Van den Haag,John Phillips Conrad
The Death Penalty Book PDF

Author : Ernest Van den Haag,John Phillips Conrad
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 314 pages
File Size : 44,6 Mb
Release : 2013-06-29
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781489927873

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The Death Penalty by Ernest Van den Haag,John Phillips Conrad Pdf

From 1965 until 1980, there was a virtual moratorium on executions for capital offenses in the United States. This was due primarily to protracted legal proceedings challenging the death penalty on constitutional grounds. After much Sturm und Drang, the Supreme Court of the United States, by a divided vote, finally decided that "the death penalty does not invariably violate the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause of the Eighth Amendment." The Court's decisions, however, do not moot the controversy about the death penalty or render this excellent book irrelevant. The ball is now in the court of the Legislature and the Executive. Leg islatures, federal and state, can impose or abolish the death penalty, within the guidelines prescribed by the Supreme Court. A Chief Executive can commute a death sentence. And even the Supreme Court can change its mind, as it has done on many occasions and did, with respect to various aspects of the death penalty itself, durlog the moratorium period. Also, the people can change their minds. Some time ago, a majority, according to reliable polls, favored abolition. Today, a substantial majority favors imposition of the death penalty. The pendulum can swing again, as it has done in the past.