Questioning Capital Punishment

Questioning Capital Punishment PDF Author: James R. Acker
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317689321
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
The death penalty has inspired controversy for centuries. Raising questions regarding capital punishment rather than answering them, Questioning Capital Punishment offers the footing needed to allow for more informed consideration and analysis of these controversies. Acker edits judicial decisions that have addressed constitutional challenges to capital punishment and its administration in the United States and uses complementary materials to offer historical, empirical, and normative perspectives about death penalty policies and practices. This book is ideal for upper-level undergraduate and graduate classes in criminal justice.

Questioning Capital Punishment

Questioning Capital Punishment PDF Author: James R. Acker
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317689321
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
The death penalty has inspired controversy for centuries. Raising questions regarding capital punishment rather than answering them, Questioning Capital Punishment offers the footing needed to allow for more informed consideration and analysis of these controversies. Acker edits judicial decisions that have addressed constitutional challenges to capital punishment and its administration in the United States and uses complementary materials to offer historical, empirical, and normative perspectives about death penalty policies and practices. This book is ideal for upper-level undergraduate and graduate classes in criminal justice.

Deterrence and the Death Penalty

Deterrence and the Death Penalty PDF Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309254167
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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Book Description
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.

Debating the Death Penalty

Debating the Death Penalty PDF Author: Hugo Adam Bedau
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199745064
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
When news breaks that a convicted murderer, released from prison, has killed again, or that an innocent person has escaped the death chamber in light of new DNA evidence, arguments about capital punishment inevitably heat up. Few controversies continue to stir as much emotion as this one, and public confusion is often the result. This volume brings together seven experts--judges, lawyers, prosecutors, and philosophers--to debate the death penalty in a spirit of open inquiry and civil discussion. Here, as the contributors present their reasons for or against capital punishment, the multiple facets of the issue are revealed in clear and thought-provoking detail. Is the death penalty a viable deterrent to future crimes? Does the imposition of lesser penalties, such as life imprisonment, truly serve justice in cases of the worst offences? Does the legal system discriminate against poor or minority defendants? Is the possibility of executing innocent persons sufficient grounds for abolition? In confronting such questions and making their arguments, the contributors marshal an impressive array of evidence, both statistical and from their own experiences working on death penalty cases. The book also includes the text of Governor George Ryan's March 2002 speech in which he explained why he had commuted the sentences of all prisoners on Illinois's death row. By representing the viewpoints of experts who face the vexing questions about capital punishment on a daily basis, Debating the Death Penalty makes a vital contribution to a more nuanced understanding of the moral and legal problems underlying this controversy.

The Hanging Question

The Hanging Question PDF Author: Howard League for Penal Reform
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 150

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Book Description


Capital Punishment: New Perspectives

Capital Punishment: New Perspectives PDF Author: Mr Peter Hodgkinson
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN: 1472412222
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 443

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Book Description
This collection asks questions about the received wisdom of the debate about capital punishment. Woven through the book, questions are asked of, and remedies proposed for, a raft of issues identified as having been overlooked in the traditional discourse. It provides a long overdue review of the disparate groups and strategies that lay claim to abolitionism. The authors argue that capital litigators should use their skills challenging the abuses not just of process, but of the conditions in which the condemned await their fate, namely prison conditions, education, leisure, visits, medical services, etc. In the aftermath of successful constitutional challenges it is the beneficiaries (arguably those who are considered successes, having been ‘saved’ from the death penalty and now serving living death penalties of one sort or another) who are suffering the cruel and inhumane alternative. Part I of the book offers a selection of diverse, nuanced examinations of death penalty phenomena, scrutinizing complexities frequently omitted from the narrative of academics and activists. It offers a challenging and comprehensive analysis of issues critical to the abolition debate. Part II offers examinations of countries usually absent from academic analysis to provide an understanding of the status of the debate locally, with opportunities for wider application.

Let the Lord Sort Them

Let the Lord Sort Them PDF Author: Maurice Chammah
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 1524760285
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
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.

Capital Punishment: New Perspectives

Capital Punishment: New Perspectives PDF Author: Peter Hodgkinson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317169891
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 406

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Book Description
This collection asks questions about the received wisdom of the debate about capital punishment. Woven through the book, questions are asked of, and remedies proposed for, a raft of issues identified as having been overlooked in the traditional discourse. It provides a long overdue review of the disparate groups and strategies that lay claim to abolitionism. The authors argue that capital litigators should use their skills challenging the abuses not just of process, but of the conditions in which the condemned await their fate, namely prison conditions, education, leisure, visits, medical services, etc. In the aftermath of successful constitutional challenges it is the beneficiaries (arguably those who are considered successes, having been ’saved’ from the death penalty and now serving living death penalties of one sort or another) who are suffering the cruel and inhumane alternative. Part I of the book offers a selection of diverse, nuanced examinations of death penalty phenomena, scrutinizing complexities frequently omitted from the narrative of academics and activists. It offers a challenging and comprehensive analysis of issues critical to the abolition debate. Part II offers examinations of countries usually absent from academic analysis to provide an understanding of the status of the debate locally, with opportunities for wider application.

The Death Penalty

The Death Penalty PDF Author: Lauri S. Friedman
Publisher: Greenhaven Press, Incorporated
ISBN:
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 150

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Book Description
Presents essays with divergent views chronicling the history of the debate and controversy over the death penalty.

Capital Punishment on Trial

Capital Punishment on Trial PDF Author: David M. Oshinsky
Publisher: Landmark Law Cases & American
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 170

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Book Description
A Pulitzer Prize-winning historian takes a new and closer look at the Supreme Court's controversial and much-debated stance on capital punishment in the landmark case of Furman v. Georgia.

DeathQuest

DeathQuest PDF Author: Robert M. Bohm
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1437755402
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 496

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Book Description
The first true textbook on the death penalty, this text provides an exhaustive introduction, starting with its history and taking the reader through the facts, issues, opinions and controversies surrounding capital punishment. The author’s motivation has been to understand what motivates the "deathquest" of the American people, leading a large percentage of the public to support the death penalty. The book will educate readers so that whatever their death penalty opinions are, they are informed ones. Discussion questions accompany each chapter. Appendix contains ABA guidelines for appointment and performance of defense counsel in death penalty cases.