Race, Class, and the Death Penalty PDF Download

Author: Howard W. Allen
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791474389
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
Examines both the legal and illegal uses of the death penalty in American history.

Author: David P. Keys
Publisher: Lynne Rienner Publishers
ISBN: 9781626373563
Category : African American criminals
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
In what has been called the Dred Scott decision of our times, the US Supreme Court found in McCleskey v. Kemp that evidence of overwhelming racial disparities in the capital punishment process could not be admitted in individual capital cases, in effect institutionalizing a racially unequal system of criminal justice. Exploring the enduring legacy of this radical decision nearly three decades later, the authors of Race and the Death Penalty examine the persistence of racial discrimination in the practice of capital punishment, the dynamics that drive it, and the human consequences of both. David P. Keys is associate professor of criminal justice at New Mexico State University. R.J. Maratea is assistant professor of criminal justice at New Mexico State University.

Author: Maurice Chammah
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 1524760277
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE • A deeply reported, searingly honest portrait of the death penalty in Texas—and what it tells us about crime and punishment in America “If you’re one of those people who despair that nothing changes, and dream that something can, this is a story of how it does.”—Anand Giridharadas, The New York Times Book Review WINNER OF THE J. ANTHONY LUKAS AWARD In 1972, the United States Supreme Court made a surprising ruling: the country’s death penalty system violated the Constitution. The backlash was swift, especially in Texas, where executions were considered part of the cultural fabric, and a dark history of lynching was masked by gauzy visions of a tough-on-crime frontier. When executions resumed, Texas quickly became the nationwide leader in carrying out the punishment. Then, amid a larger wave of criminal justice reform, came the death penalty’s decline, a trend so durable that even in Texas the punishment appears again close to extinction. In Let the Lord Sort Them, Maurice Chammah charts the rise and fall of capital punishment through the eyes of those it touched. We meet Elsa Alcala, the orphaned daughter of a Mexican American family who found her calling as a prosecutor in the nation’s death penalty capital, before becoming a judge on the state’s highest court. We meet Danalynn Recer, a lawyer who became obsessively devoted to unearthing the life stories of men who committed terrible crimes, and fought for mercy in courtrooms across the state. We meet death row prisoners—many of them once-famous figures like Henry Lee Lucas, Gary Graham, and Karla Faye Tucker—along with their families and the families of their victims. And we meet the executioners, who struggle openly with what society has asked them to do. In tracing these interconnected lives against the rise of mass incarceration in Texas and the country as a whole, Chammah explores what the persistence of the death penalty tells us about forgiveness and retribution, fairness and justice, history and myth. Written with intimacy and grace, Let the Lord Sort Them is the definitive portrait of a particularly American institution.

Author: Bharat Malkani
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780367899035
Category : Antislavery movements
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
It has long been acknowledged that the death penalty in the United States of America has been shaped by the country's history of slavery and racial violence, but this book considers the lesser-explored relationship between the two practices' respective abolitionist movements. The book explains how the historical and conceptual links between slavery and capital punishment have both helped and hindered efforts to end capital punishment. The comparative study also sheds light on the nature of such efforts, and offers lessons for how death penalty abolitionism should proceed in future. Using the history of slavery and abolition, it is argued that anti-death penalty efforts should be premised on the ideologies of the radical slavery abolitionists.

Author: Carol S. Steiker
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674737423
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
Before constitutional regulation -- The Supreme Court steps in -- The invisibility of race in the constitutional revolution -- Between the Supreme Court and the states -- The failures of regulation -- An unsustainable system? -- Recurring patterns in constitutional regulation -- The future of the American death penalty -- Life after death

Author: Jeff Spinner-Halev
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107017513
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
Argues that understanding the impact of past injustices faced by some peoples can help us understand and overcome injustice today.

Author: Charles J. Ogletree
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814762484
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
Is life without parole the perfect compromise to the death penalty? Or is it as ethically fraught as capital punishment? This comprehensive, interdisciplinary anthology treats life without parole as “the new death penalty.” Editors Charles J. Ogletree, Jr. and Austin Sarat bring together original work by prominent scholars in an effort to better understand the growth of life without parole and its social, cultural, political, and legal meanings. What justifies the turn to life imprisonment? How should we understand the fact that this penalty is used disproportionately against racial minorities? What are the most promising avenues for limiting, reforming, or eliminating life without parole sentences in the United States? Contributors explore the structure of life without parole sentences and the impact they have on prisoners, where the penalty fits in modern theories of punishment, and prospects for (as well as challenges to) reform.

Author: Sandra J. Jones
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780739120385
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
"While a great deal of research has been done about many aspects of the death penalty, very little attention has been paid to the movement organized against it. Coalition Building in the Anti-Death Penalty Movement fills that gap with an empirical examination of the external and internal factors that shape the role race plays in the anti-death penalty movement. While the death rows across the U.S. are overwhelmingly filled with racial minorities and the poor, the ranks of the anti-death penalty movement are dominated by white, middle-class professionals. The attention given to race arise out of this racial distinction between death row inmates and the activists who advocate for them." "By conducting interviews with white, black, and Latino anti-death penalty activists, this book examines the influence of race on the mobilization of activists and their approach toward abolition. The concepts of political opportunity, mobilizing structures, and framing provided by the political process model, are used to describe the complex manner in which moral opposition to the death penalty is shaped by the racial realities of the activists. Although racial tensions lie just below the surface, they nonetheless create real obstacles for the movement as it strives to build a racially diverse coalition of activists aimed at death penalty abolition." --Book Jacket.

Author: David Rose
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 1595586717
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
Award-winning "Vanity Fair" reporter Rose has written a gripping, revealing drama that is also a compelling, accessible, and timely exploration of race and criminal justice as it addresses the corruption of due process as a tool of racial oppression.

Author: Matthew B. Robinson
Publisher: Prentice Hall
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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Book Description
For courses in Capital Punishment, The Death Penalty, Policy Analysis/Policy Evaluation/Public Policy and Social Problems. Based on empirical evidence, Death Nation offers a fair and reasoned analysis of capital punishment as it is actually practiced in the United States. It includes a discussion of death penalty history, an analysis of the death penalty law and a discussion of various policy implications. Rather than present philosophical or moral arguments, it presents findings from a survey administered to dozens of capital punishment experts throughout the United States. Included in the book are fact check sections that analyze these expert opinions for accuracy based on available empirical evidence.