INDEX

In this compelling and timely work, Austin Sarat provides the first book-length work on executive clemency. He turns our focus from questions of guilt and innocence to the very meaning of mercy. Starting from Ryan’s controversial decision, Mercy on Trial uses the lens of executive clemency in capital cases to discuss the fraught condition of mercy in American political life. Most pointedly, Sarat argues that mercy itself is on trial. Although it has always had a problematic position as a form of “lawful lawlessness,” it has come under much more intense popular pressure and criticism in recent decades. This has yielded a radical decline in the use of the power of chief executives to stop executions.

• Document type Book
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Clemency,

She tells the story of two inmates she came to know as a spiritual adviser. Dobie Williams, a poor black man with an IQ of 65 from rural Louisiana, was executed after being represented by incompetent counsel and found guilty by an all-white jury based mostly on conjecture and speculation. Joseph O’Dell was convicted of murder after the court heard from an inmate who later admitted to giving false testimony for his own benefit. O’Dell received neither an evidentiary hearing nor potentially exculpatory DNA testing and was executed, insisting on his innocence the whole while. Besides exploring the shaky cases against them, Prejean describes in vivid detail the thoughts and feelings of Williams and O’Dell as their bids for clemency fail and they are put to death. The second part of the book details “the machinery of death,” the legal process that Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, dismayed at the inequities of the death penalty, cited as his reason for resigning and that current justice Antonin Scalia has boasted of being a part of.

• Document type Book
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Networks,

In Murdering Myths: The Story Behind the Death Penalty, Judith Kay goes beyond the hype and statistics to examine Americans’ deep-seated beliefs about crime and punishment. She argues that Americans share a counter-productive idea of justice–that punishment corrects bad behavior, suffering pays for wrong deeds, and victims’ desire for revenge is natural and inevitable. Drawing on interviews with both victims and inmates, Kay shows how this belief harms perpetrators, victims, and society and calls for a new narrative that recognizes the humanity in all of us.

• Document type Book
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Networks,

In Death by Design, research psychologist Craig Haney argues that capital punishment, and particularly the sequence of events that lead to death sentencing itself, is maintained through a complex and elaborate social psychological system that distance and disengage us from the true nature of the task. Relying heavily on his own research and that of other social scientists, Haney suggests that these social psychological forces enable persons to engage in behavior from which many of them otherwise would refrain. However, by facilitating death sentencing in these ways, this inter-related set of social psychological forces also undermines the reliability and authenticity of the process, and compromises the fairness of its outcomes. Because these social psychological forces are systemic in nature –built into the very system of death sentencing itself –Haney concludes by suggesting a number of inter-locking reforms, derived directly from empirical research on capital punishment, that are needed to increase the fairness and reliability of the process.

• Document type Book
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Networks,

The editors of this study isolate the core issues influencing legislation so that they can be incorporated into strategies that advise governments in changing their policy on capital punishment. What are the critical factors determining whether a country replaces, retains or restores the death penalty? Why do some countries maintain the death penalty in theory, but in reality rarely invoke it? These questions and others are explored in chapters on South Korea, Lithuania, Georgia, Japan and the British Caribbean Commonwealth, as well as the U.S.

• Document type Book
• Countries list Georgia
• Themes list Networks,

Drawing on his encyclopedic knowledge of the field, Bedau addresses topics such as strong public suppport for the death penalty, wrongful convictions, the disappearance of executive clemency, constitutional arguments surronding the Eight Amendment, and procedural reforms under consideration that move toward abolition.

• Document type Book
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Networks,

This book contains contributions from judges, attorneys, and academicians on both sides of the death penalty question. The grounds advanced for justification of capital punishment–including deterrence, retribution, and closure for victims’ families–are considered. Whether life imprisonment is adequate to address these concerns is also debated. Other issues include whether racial minorities or indigent defendants are disproportionately executed, whether the penalty is otherwise arbitrarily applied, and what risks exist regarding the execution of an innocent person.

• Document type Book
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Networks,

Determinants of the Death Penalty seeks to explain the phenomenon of capital punishment – without recourse to value judgements – by identifying those characteristics common to countries that use the death penalty and those that mark countries which do not. This global study uses statistical analysis to relate the popularity of the death penalty to physical, cultural, social, economical, institutional, actor oriented and historical factors. Separate studies are conducted for democracies and non-democracies and within four regional contexts. The book also contains an in-depth investigation into determinants of the death penalty in the USA.

• Document type Book
• Themes list Networks,

This important book is sure to foster informed public discussion about the death penalty by deepening readers’ understanding of how religious beliefs and perspectives shape this contentious issue. Featuring a fair, balanced appraisal of its topic, Religion and the Death Penalty brings thoughtful religious reflection to bear on current challenges facing the capital justice system.

• Document type Book
• Themes list Religion ,

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. 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.

• Document type Book
• Countries list United States
• Themes list Networks,