Two new books address the death penal­ty from dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives: one ana­lyz­ing the future of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, the oth­er, by Billy Neal Moore, relates the expe­ri­ence of being on death row. Alan Clarke and Laurelyn Whitt exam­ine two fac­tors that are gain­ing impor­tance in the debate over cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The Bitter Fruit of American Justice (Northeastern 2007) con­tends that increas­ing oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty through­out the world could affect how oth­er coun­tries relate polit­i­cal­ly to the United States. The sec­ond influ­ence is the repeat­ed dis­cov­ery of inno­cent peo­ple on America’s death rows. The authors sug­gest that these two fac­tors could lead to the end of the death penal­ty in the United States. 

Read more about the book here. See also International and Innocence.


In his mem­oir, for­mer death row inmate Billy Neal Moore describes his time on death row, lead­ing up to the 7 hours before his sched­uled exe­cu­tion. Admittedly guilty of mur­der, Moore spent over 16 years on death row before his death sen­tence was over­turned. He was sub­se­quent­ly freed because of his exem­plary behav­ior. Moore’s account details how he asked for and received for­give­ness from the victim’s fam­i­ly. His sto­ry is also described in the film ​“Execution.”

For more infor­ma­tion on Moore’s book I Shall Not Die: Seventy-two Hours on Death Watch (AuthorHouse 2005), click here. For more infor­ma­tion on ​“Execution,” click here. See also Death Row and Resources.

(Posted January 17, 2008).

Citation Guide