The University of Missouri-Kansas City Law Review recent­ly pub­lished a sym­po­sium issue of Death Penalty Stories, high­light­ing the role of the nar­ra­tive in the defense of death penal­ty cas­es. The com­pi­la­tion includes con­tri­bu­tions from lit­i­ga­tors who have used per­sua­sive nar­ra­tive in sup­port of a life sen­tence. Russell Stetler’s The Unknown Story of a Motherless Child chron­i­cles the case of Edgar H., who was con­vict­ed of killing four men in California. Edgar’s trau­mat­ic child­hood was influ­en­tial in nego­ti­at­ing a sen­tence of life instead of death. Dr. Craig Haney’s arti­cle, On Mitigation as Counter-Narrative: A Case Study of the Hidden Context of Prison Violence, intro­duces the con­cept of the ​“mas­ter nar­ra­tive,” the offi­cial sto­ry – often laden with inflam­ma­to­ry rhetoric – that pub­lic offi­cials sup­ply to the media and that sets the stage for a cap­i­tal tri­al end­ing in a death sen­tence. Haney argues that ​“more accu­rate infor­ma­tion about the role of adverse social his­to­ries and pow­er­ful social con­di­tions” might lead to more informed pub­lic debate over the util­i­ty of capital punishment.

Other arti­cles in the vol­ume include Michael Mello’s What Came Before We Killed Him: Deconstructing Execution #58, and The Importance of Storytelling at All Stages of a Capital Case by Michael N. Burt. Other authors include attor­neys Sean O’Brien, John Blume, Sheri Lynn Johnson, Mark Olive, Marc Bookman and Denny LeBoeuf.

(77 University of Missouri-Kansas City Law Review 831, Summer 2009). See also Law Review and Representation.

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