Capital Consequences: Families of the Condemned Tell Their Stories

Capital Consequences: Families of the Condemned Tell Their Stories is a new book by Rachel King of the ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project. The book focus­es on the impact that the death penal­ty has on the fam­i­lies of those who have been con­demned to die. King, who also wrote ​“Don’t Kill in Our Names: Families of Murder Victims Speak Out Against the Death Penalty,” describes these indi­vid­u­als as the unseen vic­tims of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and high­lights the expe­ri­ence of hav­ing loved ones on death row using per­son­al accounts and a mov­ing nar­ra­tive voice. King notes that because their pain tends to attract less atten­tion and empa­thy than the hurt of crime vic­tims’ fam­i­lies, many fam­i­ly mem­bers of the con­demned suf­fer alone. Though the book uses the sto­ries of the con­demned to depict the flaws in the judi­cial sys­tem, its clear­est mes­sage is that trag­ic events have trag­ic con­se­quences that reach far beyond their imme­di­ate vic­tims. (Rutgers University Press, 2005).