Author: Carolyn Strange
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1487508379
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 382
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Book Description
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.
Author: Carolyn Strange
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1487538111
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 382
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Book Description
From Confederation to the partial abolition of the death penalty a century later, defendants convicted of sexually motivated killings and sexually violent homicides in Canada were more likely than any other condemned criminals to be executed for their crimes. Despite the emergence of psychiatric expertise in criminal trials, moral disgust and anger proved more potent in courtrooms, the public mind, and the hearts of the bureaucrats and politicians responsible for determining the outcome of capital cases. Wherever death has been set as the ultimate criminal penalty, the poor, minority groups, and stigmatized peoples have been more likely to be accused, convicted, and executed. Although the vast majority of convicted sex killers were white, Canada’s racist notions of "the Indian mind" meant that Indigenous defendants faced the presumption of guilt. Black defendants were also subjected to discriminatory treatment, including near lynchings. In debates about capital punishment, abolitionists expressed concern that prejudices and poverty created the prospect of wrongful convictions. Unique in the ways it reveals the emotional drivers of capital punishment in delivering inequitable outcomes, The Death Penalty and Sex Murder in Canadian History provides a thorough overview of sex murder and the death penalty in Canada. It serves as an essential history and a richly documented cautionary tale for the present.
Author: Shane Claiborne
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062347365
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 210
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Book Description
In this reasoned exploration of justice, retribution, and redemption, the champion of the new monastic movement, popular speaker, and author of the bestselling The Irresistible Revolution offers a powerful and persuasive appeal for the abolition of the death penalty. The Bible says an eye for an eye. But is the state’s taking of a life true—or even practical—punishment for convicted prisoners? In this thought-provoking work, Shane Claiborne explores the issue of the death penalty and the contrast between punitive justice and restorative justice, questioning our notions of fairness, revenge, and absolution. Using an historical lens to frame his argument, Claiborne draws on testimonials and examples from Scripture to show how the death penalty is not the ideal of justice that many believe. Not only is a life lost, so too, is the possibility of mercy and grace. In Executing Grace, he reminds us of the divine power of forgiveness, and evokes the fundamental truth of the Gospel—that no one, even a criminal, is beyond redemption.
Author: John D. Bessler
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 224
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Book Description
Documents the life stories of death-row prisoners and the author's experiences as a pro bono attorney on Texas death penalty cases to present arguments for the abolishment of state-sanctioned executions.
Author: Ken Leyton-Brown
Publisher: UBC Press
ISBN: 0774859326
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 219
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Book Description
It is easy to forget that the death penalty was an accepted aspect of Canadian culture and criminal justice until 1976. The Practice of Execution in Canada is not about what led some to the gallows and others to escape it. Rather, it examines how the routine rituals and practices of execution can be seen as a crucial social institution. Drawing on hundreds of case files, Ken Leyton-Brown shows that from trial to interment, the practice of execution was constrained by law and tradition. Despite this, however, the institution was not rigid. Criticism and reform pushed executions out of the public eye, and in so doing, stripped them of meaningful ritual and made them more vulnerable to criticism.
Author: Jerry Bledsoe
Publisher: Diversion Books
ISBN: 1626812888
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 546
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Book Description
In this “true story that reads like a novel,” the #1 New York Times–bestselling author reveals the facts behind a notorious Southern murder case (Library Journal). When North Carolina farmer Stuart Taylor died after a sudden illness, his forty-six-year-old fiancée, Velma Barfield, was overcome with grief. Taylor’s family grieved with her—until the autopsy revealed traces of arsenic poisoning. Turned over to the authorities by her own son, Velma stunned her family with more revelations. This wasn’t the first time she had committed cold-blooded murder, and she would eventually be tried by the “world’s deadliest prosecutor” and sentenced to death. This book probes Velma’s stark descent into madness, her prescription drug addiction, and her effort to turn her life around through Christianity. From her harrowing childhood to the crimes that incited a national debate over the death penalty, to the final moments of her execution, Velma Barfield’s life of crime and punishment, revenge and redemption, this is crime reporting at its most gripping and profound. “A painfully intimate, moving story about the life and death of the only woman executed in the U.S. between 1962–1998 . . . With graceful writing and thorough reporting, it makes the reader look hard at something dark and sad in the human soul . . . Breathes new life into the true crime genre.” —The News & Observer “Undertakes to answer the questions about the justice system and the motives that drive women to kill.” —The Washington Post Book World “An extraordinary piece of writing . . . The most chilling description of a legal execution that we are ever likely to get.” —Citizen-Times “Taut and engrossing on the nature of justice and the death penalty as well as on guilt and responsibility.” —Booklist
Author: Petra Schmidt
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9789004124219
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 224
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Book Description
This book provides an overview of capital punishment in Japan in a legal, historical, social, cultural and political context. It provides new insights into the system, challenges traditional views and arguments and seeks the real reasons behind the retention of capital punishment in Japan.
Author: Isabel Lebourdais
Publisher: Toronto ; Montreal : McClelland and Stewart
ISBN:
Category : Harper, Lynne
Languages : en
Pages : 252
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Book Description
In 1960 at the age of 14, Steven Truscott was sentenced to death for the murder of Lynne Harper, aged 12yrs. Truscott was in a death cell for most of 4 months; then his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. He spent the next 3 years in the Guelph Training School, and in January 1963 was transferred to the federal penitentiary at Kingston, Ontario. But was he guilty? The author reviews the case and presents evidence of his innocence.
Author: David B. Chandler
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 9780771097942
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 268
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Book Description
Chandler has thoroughly researched the Canadian context of the recurring and often emotional discussion of capital punishment.
Author: C. H. S. Jayewardene
Publisher: Lexington, Mass. ; Toronto : Lexington Books
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 152
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Book Description
Decision making where social policy is concerned is no easy task. What is best for society is not only a seemingly unanswerable question, it is also a question of which the answer is not known. There are some who believe that social choice is essentially a function of individual preferences, and what is good for society is what the majority desire. There are others who feel that society is an entity distinct from and independent of the individuals who comprise it, and what is good for society is unrelated to the needs and desires of the individual.
