BOOKS: ​“America’s Experiment with Capital Punishment”

The high­ly acclaimed resource on the death penal­ty — ​“America’s Experiment with Capital Punishment” — has just been released in its Third Edition. This com­pendi­um of essays by experts cov­ers the his­to­ry, pol­i­tics, and law of the death penal­ty, as well as relat­ed issues, such as inno­cence, intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty, and race. DPIC’s Executive Director, Richard Dieter, con­tributed a chap­ter on the costs of the death penal­ty. The edi­tors encour­age read­ers to grap­ple with the many ques­tions sur­round­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, say­ing, ​“Today, more than 40 years after the death penal­ty came to an abrupt but tem­po­rary halt with the Supreme Court’s rul­ing in Furman v. Georgia (1972), a host of fun­da­men­tal ques­tions involv­ing law, social pol­i­cy, and essen­tial jus­tice remain unan­swered about America’s renewed com­mit­ment to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment.” This edi­tion includes a par­tic­u­lar focus on lethal injec­tion and trends in the Supreme Court’s inter­pre­ta­tion of the nation’s ​“evolv­ing stan­dards of decency.”

(J. Acker, R. Bohm, and C. Lanier (edi­tors), ​“America’s Experiment with Capital Punishment,” Third Edit. (Carolina Academic Press, 2014); DPIC post­ed Sept. 11, 2014). See Books.