Author: Edward A. PollowayPublisher:
ISBN: 9781937604134
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 231
Book Description
The Death Penalty and Intellectual Disability
Author: Edward A. PollowayPublisher:
ISBN: 9781937604134
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 231
Book Description
Arbitrary Death
Author: Rick UnklesbayPublisher: Wheatmark, Inc.
ISBN: 1627876812
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 162
Book Description
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.
Deadly Justice
Author: Frank R. BaumgartnerPublisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190841540
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 417
Book Description
Forty years and 1,400 executions after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the death penalty constitutional, eminent political scientist Frank Baumgartner and a team of younger scholars have collaborated to assess the empirical record and provide a definitive account of how the death penalty has been implemented. A Statistical Portrait of the Death Penalty shows that all the flaws that caused the Supreme Court to invalidate the death penalty in 1972 remain and indeed that new problems have arisen. Far from "perfecting the mechanism" of death, the modern system has failed.
Let the Lord Sort Them
Author: Maurice ChammahPublisher: Crown
ISBN: 1524760277
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 369
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.
End of Its Rope
Author: Brandon GarrettPublisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674970993
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 343
Book Description
An awakening -- Inevitability of innocence -- Mercy vs. justice -- The great American death penalty decline -- The defense lawyering effect -- Murder insurance -- The other death penalty -- The execution decline -- End game -- The triumph of mercy
Peculiar Institution
Author: David GarlandPublisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674058488
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 428
Book Description
The U.S. death penalty is a peculiar institution, and a uniquely American one. Despite its comprehensive abolition elsewhere in the Western world, capital punishment continues in dozens of American states– a fact that is frequently discussed but rarely understood. The same puzzlement surrounds the peculiar form that American capital punishment now takes, with its uneven application, its seemingly endless delays, and the uncertainty of its ever being carried out in individual cases, none of which seem conducive to effective crime control or criminal justice. In a brilliantly provocative study, David Garland explains this tenacity and shows how death penalty practice has come to bear the distinctive hallmarks of America’s political institutions and cultural conflicts. America’s radical federalism and local democracy, as well as its legacy of violence and racism, account for our divergence from the rest of the West. Whereas the elites of other nations were able to impose nationwide abolition from above despite public objections, American elites are unable– and unwilling– to end a punishment that has the support of local majorities and a storied place in popular culture. In the course of hundreds of decisions, federal courts sought to rationalize and civilize an institution that too often resembled a lynching, producing layers of legal process but also delays and reversals. Yet the Supreme Court insists that the issue is to be decided by local political actors and public opinion. So the death penalty continues to respond to popular will, enhancing the power of criminal justice professionals, providing drama for the media, and bringing pleasure to a public audience who consumes its chilling tales. Garland brings a new clarity to our understanding of this peculiar institution– and a new challenge to supporters and opponents alike.
Intellectual Disability and the Death Penalty
Author: Marc J. Tassé Ph.D.Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1440840156
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 193
Book Description
Written by two nationally recognized experts, this book provides a comprehensive review of the legal and clinical aspects of the death penalty as it relates to intellectual disability. First, the facts: people with intellectual disability may falsely confess to a crime because they want to please the authorities, and they are often less able than others to work with lawyers to prepare a defense. In addition, because of the stigma attached to intellectual disability, affected individuals often become adept at hiding it, even from their attorney, not understanding the condition's importance to the outcome of their case. Having explained such harsh realities and presented a comprehensive review of what intellectual disability is, the book focuses on the 2002 U.S. Supreme Court Atkins v. Virginia decision granting a death penalty exemption to individuals with intellectual disability. It outlines best practice regarding the determination of intellectual disability and discusses qualifications needed for experts in such cases. Related issues such as common misconceptions regarding people with intellectual disability, race, socioeconomic status, and the status of foreign nationals as it relates to the death penalty and intellectual disability are discussed as well. A must-have resource for prosecutors, defense lawyers, and clinicians providing expert testimony in death penalty cases, this book will also prove absorbing reading for anyone concerned about this troubling issue.
13 Ways of Looking at the Death Penalty
Author: Mario MarazzitiPublisher: Seven Stories Press
ISBN: 1609805682
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 167
Book Description
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.
Slavery and the Death Penalty
Author: Bharat MalkaniPublisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317054423
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 271
Book Description
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.
Race and the Death Penalty
Author: David P. KeysPublisher: Lynne Rienner Publishers
ISBN: 9781626373563
Category : African American criminals
Languages : en
Pages : 219
Book Description
In what has been called the Dred Scott decision of our times, the US Supreme Court found in McCleskey v. Kemp that evidence of overwhelming racial disparities in the capital punishment process could not be admitted in individual capital cases, in effect institutionalizing a racially unequal system of criminal justice. Exploring the enduring legacy of this radical decision nearly three decades later, the authors of Race and the Death Penalty examine the persistence of racial discrimination in the practice of capital punishment, the dynamics that drive it, and the human consequences of both. David P. Keys is associate professor of criminal justice at New Mexico State University. R.J. Maratea is assistant professor of criminal justice at New Mexico State University.
