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…

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…

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…

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…

“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…

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…

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…

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…