Books

Wounds That Do Not Bind: Victim-based Perspectives on the Death Penalty, a book by James R. Acker and David Reed Karp, examines how family members and advocates for victims address the impact of capital punishment. The book presents the personal stories of victims’ family members and their interactions with the criminal justice system. It also examines the relevant areas of legal research, including the use of victim impact evidence in capital trials, how capital punishment affects victims’…

Murdering Myths: The Story Behind the Death Penalty, a book by Judith W. Kay, uses the personal experiences of both crime victims’ families and those on death row to examine America’s beliefs about crime and punishment. Noting that researchers have raised questions about the execution of innocent people, racial bias in sentencing, and capital punishment’s failure to act as a deterrent, Kay asks why Americans still support the death penalty. She uses interviews with those most closely impacted…

“The Dreams of Ada” by Robert Mayer tells a story strikingly similar to that recounted by John Grisham in “The Innocent Man.” Each book involves the murder of a young woman from Ada, Oklahoma in the early 1980s. In both cases, there are two defendants whose convictions rely on little probative evidence but involve “confessions” that emerged from a dream. Both prosecutions were led by Bill Peterson and both involved the same jail-house informant. The defendants in Mayer’s book, Tommy Ward and…

On October 10^th, 2006, John Grisham’s first non-fiction book, The Innocent Man, will be released. The book is the compelling true story of Ron Williamson, a former hometown baseball hero of Ada, Oklahoma, who was convicted in 1988 of raping and murdering Debbie Carter. In 1999, Williamson was exonerated of the crime after serving eleven years on death row. In the context of this case, Grisham addresses many of the fundamental issues that surround the death penalty in the United States. He…

Christopher Slobogin of the University of Florida’s Law School has written a new book about the state’s legal authority to deprive people with mental disabilities of life or liberty. The book discusses a number of well known cases such as that of John Hinckley and Andrea Yates. It also includes discussion of laws dealing with the insanity defense, the death penalty, commitment of sexual predators, and hospitalization of people considered unable to make rational decisions. The book advances new…

“Reflective Glass” is a new book by death row inmate G. Wilford Hathorn. The book is a collection of fifteen essays that deal with life on Texas’ death row from a prisoner’s perspective. The essays describe many aspects of death row life: the pain of losing friends through execution, the medical treatment of prisoners, the monotony of living in a tiny cell, and the interaction with guards. Reflective Glass can be ordered from Maria Augusteijn, P.O. Box 7982, Colorado Springs, CO 80933 – 7982.

Back From The Dead: One woman’s search for the men who walked off America’s death row is the story of 589 former death row inmates who, through a lottery of fate, were given a second chance at life in 1972 when the death penalty was abolished. Joan Cheever, a former editor of the National Law Journal, who also represented a death row inmate in Texas, traveled the country interviewing inmates who had been condemned to death but whose sentences were reduced to life when the U.S. Supreme Court…

Researcher and former law professor Harriet C. Frazier has produced a thorough investigative work on the death penalty in Missouri: Death Sentences in Missouri, 1803 – 2005: A History and Comprehensive Registry of Legal Executions, Pardons, and Commutations. Building on the research of Watt Espy, Frazier discovered accounts of many additional executions in the state, especially in its earlier years. She devotes chapters to such important areas as executions of Native Americans, blacks, juveniles…

The Prison and the Gallows: The Politics of Mass Incarceration in America is a new book by Marie Gottschalk of the University of Pennsylvania analyzing the reasons behind the tremendous growth in the prison population in the United States. The book examines issues of race, the intersection of prisons with women’s issues, and the consequences of widespread incarceration on society and the economy. The author delves into the recent history of the death penalty and relates it to the larger debates…

“Legal Executions in California: A Comprehensive Registry, 1851 – 2005,” by researchers Sheila O’Hare, Irene Berry, and Jesse Silva, provides comprehensive information on legal executions in California from 1851 to the present. Starting with the year the Criminal Practices Act first authorized executions in the state, the book’s entries are organized by year of execution and contain the felon’s name, race, age at death and a detailed narrative of the crime that resulted in the death sentence.