Books

A new book, ​“In this Timeless Time: Living and Dying on Death Row in America,” authors Bruce Jackson and Diane Christian explore the life of death row inmates in Texas and in oth­er states. Jackson and Christian cap­ture, through words and pic­tures, the dai­ly expe­ri­ences of inmates while also high­light­ing arbi­trary judi­cial process­es relat­ed to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking, said, ​“With absolute fair­ness and pro­found hon­esty, Bruce Jackson and Diane Christian car­ry us into the trag­ic world of a group of pris­on­ers liv­ing on…

A new book by law pro­fes­sor Kenneth Williams of South Texas College of Law, titled Most Deserving of Death? An Analysis of the Supreme Court’s Death Penalty Jurisprudence, exam­ines whether the death penal­ty sys­tem real­ly pun­ish­es the worst offend­ers, as intend­ed by the Supreme Court’s approval of state laws. The book looks at issues such as jury selec­tion, inef­fec­tive assis­tance of coun­sel, inno­cence, and race, and how these issues reflect on who is sen­tenced to death. Prof. Williams con­cludes that that appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty is incon­sis­tent and incoherent,…

Raymond Bonner’s new book, Anatomy of Injustice: A Murder Case Gone Wrong, is about to be pub­lished and was not­ed ear­li­er by DPIC. An excerpt from the book appeared recent­ly in The Atlantic. Andrew Cohen, also writ­ing in The Atlantic, called it ​“the book of the cen­tu­ry about the death penal­ty.” Cohen com­ment­ed that ​“Bonner’s book comes at a cru­cial time in the mod­ern his­to­ry of the death penal­ty. It comes at a time when views are slow­ly hard­en­ing against the cur­rent unre­li­able and expen­sive sys­tem. It comes at a…

(Winner: Silver Medal in the U.S. History cat­e­go­ry in the Independent Publisher Book Awards). A new book by Professor John D. Bessler, titled Cruel and Unusual: The American Death Penalty and the Founders’ Eighth Amendment, chal­lenges the con­ven­tion­al wis­dom that the coun­try’s founders were avid death penal­ty sup­port­ers, and explores their var­i­ous views on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Prof. Bessler dis­cuss­es how the indis­crim­i­nate use of exe­cu­tions gave way to a more enlight­ened approach that has been evolv­ing ever since. He sheds new light on the Constitution’s ​“cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ments” clause…

The fourth edi­tion of Robert Bohm’s ​“Deathquest: An Introduction to the Theory and Practice of Capital Punishment in the United States,” is now avail­able through Anderson Publishing. The new edi­tion is updat­ed with dis­cus­sion of the lat­est research on the effec­tive­ness of the death penal­ty, the poten­tial for dis­crim­i­na­to­ry appli­ca­tion, costs, and new data on mis­car­riages of jus­tice, pub­lic opin­ion, and the influ­ences of reli­gion. This text­book includes two new chap­ters on legal chal­lenges to the death penal­ty and analy­sis of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment by the U.S. Supreme Court since 1976.…

A clas­sic book about the death penal­ty has recent­ly been re-pub­lished and is now avail­able in paper­back and elec­tron­ic form. Cruel and Unusual: The Supreme Court and Capital Punishment was writ­ten by Michael Meltsner, cur­rent­ly a pro­fes­sor at Northeastern University School of Law, and one of the key archi­tects at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund behind the chal­lenge that led to Furman v. Georgia in 1972. This Supreme Court deci­sion result­ed in over­turn­ing every death penal­ty law and every death sen­tence in the coun­try. The book traces the his­to­ry of…

A new book by Pulitzer Prize-win­ning jour­nal­ist Raymond Bonner, Anatomy of Injustice: A Murder Case Gone Wrong, inves­ti­gates the short­com­ings of the jus­tice sys­tem in the case of Edward Lee Elmore, a black man sen­tenced to death in South Carolina in 1982. Elmore, who was semi-lit­er­ate with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ties, was sent to death row for the mur­der and sex­u­al assault of a white woman, even though there was lit­tle con­nec­tion between him and the vic­tim. He was tried, con­vict­ed, and sen­tenced to death bare­ly nine­ty days after the vic­tim’s body…

A forth­com­ing book by John D. Bessler, ​“Cruel and Unusual: The American Death Penalty and the Founders’ Eighth Amendment,” dis­cuss­es the his­to­ry of the Eighth Amendment and the coun­try’s founders’ views on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. While the con­ven­tion­al wis­dom is that the founders were avid death penal­ty sup­port­ers, Bessler’s exam­i­na­tion shows they had con­flict­ing and ambiva­lent views on the sub­ject. Bessler ana­lyzes the U.S. Supreme Court’s Eighth Amendment case law and argues that the death penal­ty should prob­a­bly be held uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. Sister Helen Prejean, not­ed activist and author of Dead Man…

Professor Robert M. Bohm has pub­lished a new book on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, The Ultimate Sanction: Understanding the Death Penalty Through Its Many Voices and Many Sides. The book looks at the death penal­ty through inter­views with peo­ple affect­ed by the sys­tem in dif­fer­ent ways. ​“We must,” Bohm writes, ​“begin to under­stand the reach of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment beyond just the vic­tim and the per­pe­tra­tor.” To that end, he includes per­spec­tives from inves­ti­ga­tors, pros­e­cu­tors, prison war­dens, vic­tims’ and offend­ers’ fam­i­lies, judges, and attor­neys. The book uses inter­views to explore issues of deterrence,…