BOOKS: ​“Most Deserving of Death?”

A new book by law pro­fes­sor Kenneth Williams of South Texas College of Law, titled Most Deserving of Death? An Analysis of the Supreme Court’s Death Penalty Jurisprudence, exam­ines whether the death penal­ty sys­tem real­ly pun­ish­es the worst offend­ers, as intend­ed by the Supreme Court’s approval of state laws. The book looks at issues such as jury selec­tion, inef­fec­tive assis­tance of coun­sel, inno­cence, and race, and how these issues reflect on who is sen­tenced to death. Prof. Williams con­cludes that that appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty is incon­sis­tent and inco­her­ent, part­ly because of the Supreme Court’s jurispru­dence, and this leads to a lack of pub­lic con­fi­dence in the sys­tem. Prof. Susan D. Rozelle, of the Stetson University College of Law, said of the book, ​“Williams shines light into the dark cor­ners of the cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment debate by focus­ing on the pro­ce­dur­al night­mare. He takes read­ers on a whirl­wind tour of the system’s fail­ures, show­ing stark­ly how bad lawyer­ing, racial dis­crim­i­na­tion, and shod­dy sci­ence, for exam­ple, can mean the dif­fer­ence between life and death.”

(K. Williams, ​“Most Deserving of Death? An Analysis of the Supreme Court’s Death Penalty Jurisprudence,” Ashgate Publishing, March 2012). See U.S. Supreme Court. Read more books about the death penalty.