Books

“Media and Criminal Justice: The CSI Effect,” is a new book by Dennis J. Stevens, illus­trat­ing how tele­vi­sion pro­grams and media cov­er­age affect pub­lic per­cep­tion of crim­i­nal jus­tice. The author, who teach­es at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte and Belmont Abbey College, main­tains that tele­vi­sion shows like ​“CSI” can give the false impres­sion that all crimes are eas­i­ly solved through advanced foren­sic sci­ence. The author also address­es the prob­lem of wrong­ful con­vic­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly in cas­es involv­ing the death penal­ty. He notes that the mon­ey spent on the death penal­ty with…

A new book authored by Todd Peppers and Laura Trevvett Anderson, ​“Anatomy of An Execution,” fol­lows the sto­ry of Douglas Christopher Thomas, a juve­nile offend­er who was exe­cut­ed in Virginia in 2000. Thomas was con­vict­ed of a dou­ble homi­cide in 1990 and sen­tenced to death in 1991. He was one of the last juve­niles put to death before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the exe­cu­tion of those under the age of 18 at the time of their crime to be uncon­sti­tu­tion­al in 2005 (Roper v. Simmons). The authors explore a…

Renowned death penal­ty defense attor­ney Andrea Lyon​’s forth­com­ing book, Angel of Death Row: My Life as a Death Penalty Defense Lawyer, chron­i­cles her 30 years of expe­ri­ence rep­re­sent­ing clients in cap­i­tal mur­der cas­es. In all of the 19 cas­es where she rep­re­sent­ed defen­dants who were found guilty of cap­i­tal mur­der, jurors spared her clients’ lives. Lyon, who was fea­tured in the PBS doc­u­men­tary Race to Execution and was called the ​“angel of death row” by the Chicago Tribune, gives read­ers an inside look at what moti­vates her dur­ing these difficult…

The Last Lawyer: The Fight to Save Death Row Inmates is a book by John Temple about the coura­geous work of a death penal­ty defense attor­ney in the south. Ken Rose is an attor­ney at the Center for Death Penalty Litigation in North Carolina. He has han­dled many cap­i­tal cas­es, but the focus of this book is his defense of Bo Jones, a men­tal­ly hand­i­capped farm­hand con­vict­ed of a mur­der that occurred in 1987 and sen­tenced to death. The case high­lights issues such as inad­e­quate defense, men­tal retar­da­tion, mental…

“That Bird Has My Wings” is a new book by Jarvis Jay Masters, an inmate on San Quentin​’s death row in California. In this mem­oir, Masters tells his sto­ry from an ear­ly life with his heron-addict­ed moth­er to an abu­sive fos­ter home. He describes his escape to the illu­so­ry free­dom of the streets and through lone­ly nights spent in bus sta­tions and juve­nile homes, and final­ly to life inside the walls of San Quentin Prison. Using the nub and filler from a ball­point pen (the only writ­ing instru­ment allowed him…

In the book, A Life for a Life: The American Debate Over the Death Penalty, author Michael Dow Burkhead, a psy­chol­o­gist who has worked with crim­i­nal offend­ers for 25 years, explores the var­i­ous trends in pub­lic opin­ion that influ­ence crime pre­ven­tion efforts, cre­ate pub­lic pol­i­cy, and reform crim­i­nal law. He exam­ines eight core issues about the use of exe­cu­tions: cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment, dis­crim­i­na­tion, deter­rence, due process, cul­pa­bil­i­ty, scrip­ture, inno­cence, and jus­tice. The book pro­vides a brief his­to­ry of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the United States from the ear­li­est known execution…

In True Stories of False Confessions, edi­tors Rob Warden and Steven Drizin present arti­cles about some of the key accounts of false con­fes­sions in the U.S. jus­tice sys­tem writ­ten by more than forty authors, includ­ing Alex Kotlowitz and John Grisham. The cas­es are grouped into cat­e­gories such as brain­wash­ing, infer­ence, fab­ri­ca­tion, and men­tal fragili­ty. This refutes the per­cep­tion that false con­fes­sions rep­re­sent indi­vid­ual tragedies rather than a sys­temic flaw in the jus­tice sys­tem. The edi­tors make rec­om­men­da­tions for pol­i­cy changes that would reduce false confessions.

The Crying Tree is a new nov­el by Naseem Rakha that rais­es the real-life ques­tion: Could you for­give the man who mur­dered your son? Rakha is an award-win­ning broad­cast jour­nal­ist whose work has been heard on NPR’s ​“All Things Considered” and ​“Morning Edition.” The sto­ry of her nov­el is told through the lives of a moth­er whose son was mur­dered and the super­in­ten­dent of a state pen­i­ten­tiary where the defen­dan­t’s exe­cu­tion is to take place. Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking, said in review, ​“For any­one who has…

A new book, Lethal Rejection: Stories on Crime and Punishment, edit­ed and writ­ten in part by American University crim­i­nol­o­gist Robert Johnson and stu­dent Sonia Tabriz, fea­tures an array of fic­tion and poet­ry on crime and pun­ish­ment writ­ten by pris­on­ers, aca­d­e­mics, and stu­dents of crim­i­nol­o­gy. The book includes a num­ber of sto­ries about cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Jocelyn Pollock, Professor of Criminal Justice at Texas State University, writes in the pref­ace, “[H]umans have always used fic­tion to instruct, enlight­en and com­mu­ni­cate. Stories take us to places we haven’t been; they help us to…