Books

A new biog­ra­phy of Clarence Darrow by John A. Farrell chron­i­cles the life of this famous American lawyer, known for his elo­quence in defend­ing unpop­u­lar clients and in secur­ing reprieves for those con­demned to death. He won life sen­tences for Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, whose crimes of kid­nap­ping and mur­der had gar­nered nation­al atten­tion. He often spoke pub­licly about his oppo­si­tion to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Darrow had many famous clients dur­ing his career, includ­ing union leader Eugene Debs in the Pullman strike case, and John Scopes in the famous ​“Monkey…

Dale Recinella for­mer­ly worked as an attor­ney on large finan­cial deals, includ­ing the build­ing of a National Football League sta­di­um. He also sup­port­ed the death penal­ty. But he now focus­es on the needs of death row inmates and oth­er pris­on­ers in Florida. His new book, enti­tled ​“Now I Walk on Death Row,” tells of his career tran­si­tion and the rever­sal in his views on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Although he attrib­ut­es his changes to his Catholic reli­gious faith, he also came to see the prac­ti­cal prob­lems with the death penal­ty: ​“All the…

A new nov­el by acclaimed author John Grisham, enti­tled ​“The Confession,” tells the sto­ry of Donte Drumm, an inno­cent man who was con­vict­ed of mur­der and sen­tenced to death in Texas. The book begins as the exe­cu­tion of Drumm is only four days away and anoth­er man con­fess­es to the crime to a min­is­ter. Although a work of fic­tion, Grisham’s work offers a cri­tique of our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem and of the death penal­ty in par­tic­u­lar. USA Today​’s review of the book notes, ​“Readers who share [Grisham’s] views as well…

“The Search for Lofie Louise” by Helen B. Anthony tells the true sto­ry of Louise Peete, a woman con­vict­ed of two mur­ders in California over two decades apart in the ear­ly 1900s. She denied her guilt in both instances, and her sto­ry and tri­al were wide­ly cov­ered by the media in California. Peete received a life sen­tence for the first mur­der and a death sen­tence for the sec­ond; she was exe­cut­ed on April 11, 1947. The author cap­tures the his­to­ry of the death penal­ty in an ear­li­er era. Today, the…

A new book by David Garland, ​“Peculiar Institution: America’s Death Penalty in an Age of Abolition,” offers a fresh per­spec­tive on why the death penal­ty endures in the United States when so many oth­er coun­tries in the Western world have already abol­ished it. The book seeks to under­stand the per­sis­tence of the death penal­ty in the U.S. as a social fact, using soci­o­log­i­cal, his­tor­i­cal and legal analy­ses to explain the unique and pecu­liar man­ner in which the death penal­ty is applied. Garland con­cludes that the death penal­ty has sur­vived in…

A new book by Andrew Hammel offers insights into the dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives on the death penal­ty in America and Europe. ​“Ending the Death Penalty: The European Experience in Global Perspective” exam­ines three coun­tries that do not have the death penal­ty (Germany, France and the United Kingdom), and ana­lyzes how cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment was end­ed in those coun­tries. Hammel ulti­mate­ly believes that the gov­ern­men­tal struc­ture, cul­ture, and polit­i­cal tra­di­tions in the U.S. make the European mod­el of abo­li­tion unlikey to suc­ceed here, though he also states that ​“impor­tant piece­meal vic­to­ries” in limiting…