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The Death Penalty And Hispanics
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Book Synopsis Mexicans on Death Row by : Ricardo Ampudia
Download or read book Mexicans on Death Row written by Ricardo Ampudia and published by Arte Publico Press. This book was released on 2010-11-30 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "They stole 15 years of my life." A native of Monterrey, Mexico, Ricardo Aldape Guerra was sentenced to death in 1982 for the first-degree murder of a Houston Police Officer that took place three months earlier. He spent 15 years in a maximum security prison in Huntsville, Texas, before his death sentence was overturned and he was set free. Ricardo Ampudia, former Consul General of Mexico in Houston, Texas, explores the history and ethics of the death penalty in this fascinating look at its impact on Mexicans sentenced to death in the United States. A fervent opponent of capital punishment, Ampudia came to his beliefs because of his involvement in defending Aldape. The author offers a brief introduction about the death penalty, both in the U.S. and around the world, and notes that in 2001, 90% of all known executions occurred in China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United States. Most of the countries that apply the death penalty have dictatorial regimes or repressive governments, with the U.S. being the notable exception. Subsequent chapters focus on the phenomenon of the death penalty in the U.S. and the work done by the Mexican government to protect its citizens abroad. The final chapters focus on the Ricardo Aldape Guerra case. In this section written by Scott Atlas, the attorney who handled his defense, and Michael Mucchetti, both from the Vinson & Elkins law firm, it's revealed that the reopened investigation of the crime uncovered evidence that the jury never heard when Aldape was convicted. And in fact, a shocking pattern of police and prosecutorial intimidation, misconduct, and abuse came to light. Originally published in Mexico as Mexicanos al grito de muerte, this absorbing account of the history, use, and flaws of the death penalty is a must-read for anyone interested in the criminal justice system in the United States.
Book Synopsis Capital Punishment in America by : Martin Guevara Urbina
Download or read book Capital Punishment in America written by Martin Guevara Urbina and published by LFB Scholarly Publishing. This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text examines racial and ethnic differences, stressing how Latino's expereinces are distinct from those of Caucasians and African Americans. Theoretical and methodological shortcomings empirically, and quantitatively are addressed--provided by publisher.
Book Synopsis Courting Death by : Carol S. Steiker
Download or read book Courting Death written by Carol S. Steiker and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2016-11-07 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before constitutional regulation -- The Supreme Court steps in -- The invisibility of race in the constitutional revolution -- Between the Supreme Court and the states -- The failures of regulation -- An unsustainable system? -- Recurring patterns in constitutional regulation -- The future of the American death penalty -- Life after death
Book Synopsis Hispanics in the U.S Criminal Justice System by : Martin Guevara Urbina
Download or read book Hispanics in the U.S Criminal Justice System written by Martin Guevara Urbina and published by Charles C Thomas Publisher. This book was released on 2018-05-07 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This updated and expanded new edition resumes the theme of the first edition, and the findings reveal that race, ethnicity, gender, class, and several other variables continue to play a significant and consequential role in the legal decision-making process. The book is structured into three sections, each of which corresponds to a different body of work on Latinos. Section One explores the historical dynamics and influence of ethnicity in law enforcement, and focuses on how ethnicity impacts policing field practices, such as traffic stops, use of force, and the subsequent actions that police departments have employed to alleviate these problems. A detailed examination of critical issues facing Latino defendants seeks to better understand the law enforcement process. The history of immigration laws as it pertains to Mexicans and Latinos explains how Mexicans have been excluded from the United States through anti-immigrant legislation. Latino officers must cope with structural and political issues, the community, and media, as these practices and experiences within the American police system are explored. Section Two focuses on the repressive practices against Mexicans that resulted in executions, vigilantism, and mass expulsions. The topic of Latinos and the Fourth Amendment reveals that the constitutional right of people to be protected against unreasonable searches and seizures has been eviscerated for Latinos, and particularly for Mexicans. Possible remedies to existing shortcomings of the court system when processing indigent defendants are presented. Section Three studies the issue of Hispanics and the penal system. The ethnic realities of life behind bars, probation and parole, the legacy of capital punishment, and life after prison are discussed. Section Four addresses the globalization of Latinos, social control, and the future of Latinos in the U.S. Criminal justice system. Lastly, the race and ethnic experience through the lens of science, law, and the American imagination, are explored, concluding with policy recommendations for social and criminal justice reform, and ultimately humanizing differences. Written for professionals and students of law enforcement, this book will promote the understanding of the historical legacy of brutality, manipulation, oppression, marginalization, prejudice, discrimination, power and control, and white America's continued fear about racial and ethnic minorities.
Book Synopsis The Wrong Carlos by : James S. Liebman
Download or read book The Wrong Carlos written by James S. Liebman and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-08 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1989, Texas executed Carlos DeLuna, a poor Hispanic man with childlike intelligence, for the murder of Wanda Lopez, a convenience store clerk. His execution passed unnoticed for years until a team of Columbia Law School faculty and students almost accidentally chose to investigate his case and found that DeLuna almost certainly was innocent. They discovered that no one had cared enough about either the defendant or the victim to make sure the real perpetrator was found. Everything that could go wrong in a criminal case did. This book documents DeLunaÕs conviction, which was based on a single, nighttime, cross-ethnic eyewitness identification with no corroborating forensic evidence. At his trial, DeLunaÕs defense, that another man named Carlos had committed the crime, was not taken seriously. The lead prosecutor told the jury that the other Carlos, Carlos Hernandez, was a ÒphantomÓ of DeLunaÕs imagination. In upholding the death penalty on appeal, both the state and federal courts concluded the same thing: Carlos Hernandez did not exist. The evidence the Columbia team uncovered reveals that Hernandez not only existed but was well known to the police and prosecutors. He had a long history of violent crimes similar to the one for which DeLuna was executed. Families of both Carloses mistook photos of each for the other, and HernandezÕs violence continued after DeLuna was put to death. This book and its website (thewrongcarlos.net) reproduce law-enforcement, crime lab, lawyer, court, social service, media, and witness records, as well as court transcripts, photographs, radio traffic, and audio and videotaped interviews, documenting one of the most comprehensive investigations into a criminal case in U.S. history. The result is eye-opening yet may not be unusual. Faulty eyewitness testimony, shoddy legal representation, and prosecutorial misfeasance continue to put innocent people at risk of execution. The principal investigators conclude with novel suggestions for improving accuracy among the police, prosecutors, forensic scientists, and judges.
Book Synopsis The Execution of Willie Francis by : Gilbert King
Download or read book The Execution of Willie Francis written by Gilbert King and published by Civitas Books. This book was released on 2008 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The inspiration behind "A Lesson Before Dying" meets the best of John Grisham as a young Cajun lawyer fights to save a black teenager from the electric chair. 16-page b&w photo insert.
Book Synopsis Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 by : United States
Download or read book Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 written by United States and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis Most Deserving of Death? by : Professor Kenneth Williams
Download or read book Most Deserving of Death? written by Professor Kenneth Williams and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2013-02-28 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The role of capital punishment in America has been criticised by those for and against the death penalty, by the judiciary, academics, the media and by prison personnel. This book demonstrates that it is the inconsistent and often incoherent jurisprudence of the United States Supreme Court which accounts for a system so lacking in public confidence. Using case studies, Kenneth Williams examines issues such as jury selection, ineffective assistance of counsel, the role of race and claims of innocence which affect the Court's decisions and how these decisions are played out in the lower courts, often an inmate's last recourse before execution. Discussing international treaties and their lack of impact on capital punishment in America, this book has international appeal and makes an important contribution to legal scholarship. It also provides a unique understanding of the dynamics of an alarmingly problematic system and will be valuable to those interested in human rights and criminal justice.
Book Synopsis Cruel and Unusual by : Michael Meltsner
Download or read book Cruel and Unusual written by Michael Meltsner and published by Quid Pro Books. This book was released on 2011-07-23 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The true and gripping account of the nine-year struggle by a small band of lawyers to abolish the death penalty in the United States. Its new edition features a 2011 Foreword by death-penalty author Evan Mandery of CUNY's John Jay College of Criminal Justice, as well as a new Preface by the author.The mission, plotted out over lunch in New York's Central Park in the early 1960s, seemed as impossible as going to the moon: abolish capital punishment in every state. The approach would fight on multiple fronts, with multiple strategies. The people would be dedicated, bright, unsure, unpopular, and fascinating. This is their story: not only the cases and the arguments before courts, the death row inmates and their victims, the judges and politicians urging law and order, this is the true account of the real-life lawyers from the inside. The United States indeed went to the moon, and a few years later the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the death penalty unconstitutional. The victory was long-sought and sweet, and the pages of this book vividly let the reader live the struggle and the victory. And while the abolition eventually became as impermanent as the nation's presence on the moon, these dedicated attorneys certainly made a difference. This is their tale.As Evan Mandery writes in his new Foreword, "In these pages, Meltsner lays bare every aspect of his and his colleaguesi thinking. You will read how they handicapped their chances, which arguments they thought would work (you may be surprised), and what they thought of the Supreme Court justices who would decide the crucial cases. You will come to understand what they perceived to be the basis for support for the death penalty, and, with Meltsner's unflinching honesty, what they perceived to be the inconsistencies in their position."Mandery concludes: "It is my odd lot in life to have read almost every major book ever written about the death penalty in America. This is the best and the most important. Every serious scholar who wants to advance an argument about capital punishment in the United States--whether it is abolitionist or in favor of the death penalty, or merely a tactical assessment--cites this book. It is open and supremely accessible." And the author's "constitutional vision was years ahead of its time. His book is timeless." Part of the Legal History and Biography Series from Quid Pro Books, the new ebook editions feature embedded pagination from previous editions (consistent with the new paperback edition as well, allowing continuity in all formats), active TOC and endnotes, and quality digital formatting.
Book Synopsis Cruel & Unusual by : John D. Bessler
Download or read book Cruel & Unusual written by John D. Bessler and published by UPNE. This book was released on 2012 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This indispensable history of the Eighth Amendment and the founders' views of capital punishment is also a passionate call for the abolition of the death penalty based on the notion of cruel and unusual punishment
Download or read book Living on Death Row written by Hans Toch and published by American Psychological Association (APA). This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: PROSE Award Finalist for Psychology This book synthesizes scholarly reflections with personal accounts from prison administrators and inmates to show the harsh reality of life on death row.
Book Synopsis How Do Judges Decide? by : Cassia Spohn
Download or read book How Do Judges Decide? written by Cassia Spohn and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2002-01-28 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The appropriate amount of punishment for a given crime is an issue that has been debated by scholars, philosophers and legal professionals since the beginning of civilizations. This book seeks to address this issue in all of its complexity by providing a comprehensive overview of the sentencing process in the United States. The book begins by discussing the overall concept of punishment and then proceeds to dissect individual aspects of punishment. Topics include: the sentencing process; responsibility of the judge; disparity and discrimination in sentencing; and sentencing reform. This book is an ideal text for introductory courses on the judicial system, criminal law, law and society. It can be an essential resource to help students understand patterns in the wide discretion and latitude given to judges when determining punishments within the framework of the United States judicial system.
Book Synopsis Deterrence and the Death Penalty by : National Research Council
Download or read book Deterrence and the Death Penalty written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2012-05-26 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Book Synopsis End of Its Rope by : Brandon Garrett
Download or read book End of Its Rope written by Brandon Garrett and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2017-09-25 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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
Book Synopsis When Truth Is All You Have by : Jim McCloskey
Download or read book When Truth Is All You Have written by Jim McCloskey and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2020-07-14 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A riveting and infuriating examination of criminal prosecutions, revealing how easy it is to convict the wrong person and how nearly impossible it is to undo the error.” —Washington Post "No one has illuminated this problem more thoughtfully and persistently." —Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy Jim McCloskey was at a midlife crossroads when he met the man who would change his life. A former management consultant, McCloskey had grown disenchanted with the business world; he enrolled at Princeton Theological Seminary at the age of 37. His first assignment, in 1980, was as a chaplain at Trenton State Prison. Among the inmates was Jorge de los Santos, a heroin addict who'd been convicted of murder years earlier. He swore to McCloskey that he was innocent—and, over time, McCloskey came to believe him. With no legal or investigative training to speak of, McCloskey threw himself into the case. Two years later, thanks to those efforts, Jorge de los Santos walked free, fully exonerated. McCloskey had found his calling. He established Centurion Ministries, the first group in America devoted to overturning wrongful convictions. Together with his staff and a team of forensic experts, lawyers, and volunteers—through tireless investigation and an unflagging dedication to justice—Centurion has freed 65 innocent prisoners who had been sentenced to life or death. When Truth Is All You Have is McCloskey's inspirational story, as well as those of the unjustly imprisoned for whom he has fought. Spanning the nation, it is a chronicle of faith and doubt; of triumphant success and shattering failure. It candidly exposes a life of searching and struggle, uplifted by McCloskey's certainty that he had found what he was put on earth to do. Filled with generosity, humor, and compassion, it is the soul-bearing account of a man who has redeemed innumerable lives—and incited a movement—with nothing more than his unshakeable belief in the truth.
Download or read book I Am Troy Davis written by Jen Marlowe and published by Haymarket Books. This book was released on 2013-08-19 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The true story of a woman’s fight for her brother’s life—and her own: “Essential for those interested in the U.S. justice system” (Library Journal). On September 21, 2011, Troy Anthony Davis was put to death by the State of Georgia. Davis’s execution was protested by hundreds of thousands of people across the globe, and Pope Benedict XVI, Pres. Jimmy Carter, and fifty-one members of Congress all appealed for clemency. Davis’s older sister, Martina, a former Army flight nurse who had served in the Gulf War, was one of Davis’s strongest advocates—despite the fact that she was battling liver and metastatic breast cancer and died just weeks after her brother’s death by lethal injection. This book, coauthored by Martina and writer Jen Marlowe, tells the intimate story of an ordinary man caught up in an inexorable tragedy. From his childhood in racially charged Savannah; to the confused events that led to the 1989 shooting of a police officer; to Davis’s sudden arrest, conviction, and two-decade fight to prove his innocence, I Am Troy Davis takes us inside a broken legal system where life and death hang in the balance. It is also an inspiring testament to the unbreakable bond of family and the resilience of love, and reminds us that even when you reach the end of justice, voices from across the world can rise together in chorus and proclaim, “I am Troy Davis.” “Martina Correia’s heroic fight to save her brother’s life while battling for her own serves as a powerful testament for activists.” —The Nation “Should be read and cherished.” —Maya Angelou, author and civil rights activist
Book Synopsis The Death Penalty by : Stuart BANNER
Download or read book The Death Penalty written by Stuart BANNER and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The death penalty arouses our passions as does few other issues. Some view taking another person's life as just and reasonable punishment while others see it as an inhumane and barbaric act. But the intensity of feeling that capital punishment provokes often obscures its long and varied history in this country. Now, for the first time, we have a comprehensive history of the death penalty in the United States. Law professor Stuart Banner tells the story of how, over four centuries, dramatic changes have taken place in the ways capital punishment has been administered and experienced. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the penalty was standard for a laundry list of crimes--from adultery to murder, from arson to stealing horses. Hangings were public events, staged before audiences numbering in the thousands, attended by women and men, young and old, black and white alike. Early on, the gruesome spectacle had explicitly religious purposes--an event replete with sermons, confessions, and last minute penitence--to promote the salvation of both the condemned and the crowd. Through the nineteenth century, the execution became desacralized, increasingly secular and private, in response to changing mores. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, ironically, as it has become a quiet, sanitary, technological procedure, the death penalty is as divisive as ever. By recreating what it was like to be the condemned, the executioner, and the spectator, Banner moves beyond the debates, to give us an unprecedented understanding of capital punishment's many meanings. As nearly four thousand inmates are now on death row, and almost one hundred are currently being executed each year, the furious debate is unlikely to diminish. The Death Penalty is invaluable in understanding the American way of the ultimate punishment. Table of Contents: Abbreviations Introduction 1. Terror, Blood, and Repentance 2. Hanging Day 3. Degrees of Death 4. The Origins of Opposition 5. Northern Reform, Southern Retention 6. Into the Jail Yard 7. Technological Cures 8. Decline 9. To the Supreme Court 10. Resurrection Epilogue Appendix: Counting Executions Notes Acknowledgments Index Reviews of this book: [Banner] deftly balances history and politics, crafting a book that will be valuable to anyone interested in knowing more about capital punishment, no matter what his or her views are on the ethical issues surrounding the topic. --David Pitt, Booklist Reviews of this book: In this well-researched and clear account...Banner charts how and why this country went from having one of the world's mildest punitive systems to one of its harshest. --Publishers Weekly Reviews of this book: Stuart Banner's book is fine and balanced and important. His lucid history of this grim subject is scrupulously accurate...It is refreshingly free of the tendentiousness and the sensationalism that this subject invites. --Richard A. Posner, New Republic Reviews of this book: [The] contrast between the past and the present can now be seen with great clarity thanks to...Stuart Banner and his comprehensive book, The Death Penalty...American historians have been slow to undertake anything like a full-scale study of the subject...Banner's book does much to fill [the gaps]. His book is an important and comprehensive...treatment of the topic. --Hugo Adam Bedau, Boston Review Reviews of this book: Despite the gruesome nature of the book's topic, it is difficult to stop reading. Banner's research is fascinating, his writing style compelling. Given the emotional nature of the subject (few people known to me are wishy-washy about whether the death penalty is moral or immoral), Banner walks the line of neutrality skillfully, without seeming evasive. --Steve Weinberg, Legal Times Reviews of this book: Stuart Banner's The Death Penalty is a tour de force, remarkable for its neutrality as it traces the ways in which the death penalty has been applied, and for what kinds of crimes, from the Colonial era to the present. Banner...writes like a historian who believes perspective is best gained by dispassionately setting out what happened and letting everyone come to his or her own conclusions. I think, in this book, that works wonderfully. On a subject in which emotions run so high, it seems awfully useful to have a dispassionate voice. After all, if Banner allowed his own feelings on the death penalty--pro, con or somewhere in the middle--to be known, the book easily could be dismissed as a diatribe. He doesn't, and it can't. --Judith Neuman Beck, San Jose Mercury News Reviews of this book: Law professor Banner...offers a persuasive examination of the evolution of capital punishment from Colonial times onward. He makes clear that the death penalty has possessed generally consistent support from the US populace, although changes in the sensibilities of juries, executioners, legal theoreticians, and judges have occurred...Highly recommended. --R. C. Cottrell, Choice Reviews of this book: Stuart Banner aptly illustrates in The Death Penalty, like the nation, the death penalty has changed with the times...Banner's account spotlights a number of interesting trends in American history...Mostly evenhanded in the tour he provides through the history of the death penalty and its role in and reflection of American society, he has managed to provide an accessible look at what is a profoundly controversial and complicated subject. --Steven Martinovich, Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel Reviews of this book: "For centuries," Stuart Banner tells us, "Americans had been proud to possess a criminal-justice system that made less use of the death penalty than just about any other place on the globe, including the countries of western Europe." But no longer. Now we possess "one of the harshest criminal codes in the world." The Death Penalty helps explain that turnaround, but only in the course of a complicated story in which different factors emerge at different times to play often unforeseeable roles...[This is a] superbly told history. --Paul Rosenberg, Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News Reviews of this book: Stuart Banner's lucid, richly researched book brings us, for the first time, a comprehensive history of American capital punishment from colonial times to the present. He describes the practices that characterized the institution at different periods, elucidates their ritual purposes and social meanings, and identifies the forces that led to their transformation. The book's well-ordered narrative is interspersed with individual case histories, that give flesh and blood to the account. --David Garland, Times Literary Supplement Reviews of this book: [An] informative, even-handed, chillingly fascinating account of why and how the U.S. government and many state governments decided to sponsor executions of criminals--even though innocent defendants might die, too. --Jane Henderson, St. Louis Post-Dispatch Reviews of this book: Stuart Banner's The Death Penalty is a splendidly objective achievement. Delightfully written, free of academic pretense, liberally sprinkled with apt references from contemporary sources, the book exhaustively explores the multifaceted evolution of America's penal practices. --Elsbeth Bothe, Baltimore Sun The Death Penalty is certain to be the definitive account of the American experience with capital punishment, from its beginnings in the seventeenth century, to the execution of Timothy McVeigh in 2001. This is a first rate piece of scholarship: well written, deeply researched, fascinating to read, and full of insights and good common sense. It is, in my view, one of the finest books to deal with this troubled and troubling subject. Historical and legal scholarship owe a debt of gratitude to Stuart Banner. --Lawrence Friedman, Stanford Law School A masterful book. This is a long overdue account which fills a huge gap in our understanding of America's long and complex relationship to state killing. With meticulous scholarship and lucid prose, Banner has written a compelling account of the place of capital punishment in our society. It sets the standard for all future scholarship on the history of the death penalty in America. --Austin Sarat, author of When the State Kills: Capital Punishment and the American Condition The Death Penalty, a study we have badly needed, is the first history of the nation's engagement--as well as its disengagement--with capital punishment from the country's earliest days to the present. With a sure grasp of the constitutional issues, Stuart Banner greatly advances a conversation at last underway about the rightness of putting people to death for having inflicted a death. Banner's greatest and most useful feat is remaining dispassionate on a subject that he cares deeply about--as do a growing number of his fellow Americans. --William S. McFeely, author of Proximity to Death The Death Penalty beautifully explains the changing paths traveled by supporters and opponents of capital punishment over the years. It explores a subject of enormous symbolic importance to Americans today, linking our views about the death penalty to our larger concerns about crime. --David Oshinsky, author of "Worse Than Slavery": Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice Banner's book is a superbly detailed and textured social history of a subject too often treated in legal abstractions. It demonstrates how capital punishment has gnawed at the conscience and imagination of Americans, and how it has challenged their efforts to define themselves culturally, politically, and racially. --Robert Weisberg, Stanford Law School
