A new book by Professors Saundra Westervelt and Kimberly Cook looks at the lives of eighteen people who had been wrongfully sentenced to death and who were later freed from death row. In Life After Death Row: Exonerees’ Search for Community and Identity, the authors focus on three central areas affecting those who had to begin a new life after leaving years of severe confinement: the seeming invisibility of these individuals after their release; the complicity of the justice system in allowing that invisibility; and the need for each of them to confront their personal trauma. C. Ronald Huff, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, noted, “The authors skillfully conduct a journey inside the minds of exonerees, allowing readers to see the world from their unique perspectives.”

Saundra D. Westervelt is an associate professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina Greensboro. Kimberly J. Cook is professor and chair of the department of sociology and criminology at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

(S. Westervelt and K. Cook, “Life After Death Row: Exonerees’ Search for Community and Identity,” Rutgers University Press, forthcoming September 2012). See Death Row and Innocence. Read more books on the death penalty. Listen to DPIC’s podcasts on Death Row and on Innocence.

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