Voices of the Death Penalty Debate: A Citizen’s Guide to Capital Punishment is a new book that explores arguments for and against the death penalty through testimony given at the historic 2004 and 2005 hearings in New York on whether the state’s death penalty should be reinstated. The state’s law was struck down by the N.Y. Court of Appeals in 2004. Authored by Russell Murphy, a Suffolk University Law School professor, the book walks readers through testimony from experts, ordinary citizens, victims, organizations, religious leaders, and individuals who had been exonerated and freed from death row. For more information on this book, click here. (New York’s legislature has repeatedly refused to reinstate the death penalty, and in 2007 the last person was removed from the state’s death row, ending a 12-year experiment with capital punishment, which had been reinstated in 1995).

(R. Murphy, Voices of the Death Penalty Debate; A Citizen’s Guide to Capital Punishment, Vandeplas Publishing, May 18, 2010). Posted June 18, 2010. See Books on the Death Penalty and History of the Death Penalty.