America's Experiment with Capital Punishment

America's Experiment with Capital Punishment
Title America's Experiment with Capital Punishment PDF eBook
Author James R. Acker
Publisher
Pages 828
Release 2003
Genre Social Science
ISBN

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Comprises 21 essays which analyze changes in capital punishment and its administration over the last 25 years and explores issues relevant to the present and future of the death penalty in America. The essays address capital punishment public opinion, law and politics, the justice of the death penalty, the utility of the capital sanction, jury decision making, defense counsel, race discrimination, mitigation theory, cost, habeas corpus, victims, the role of mental health professionals, and executive clemency. No index. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Deterrence and the Death Penalty

Deterrence and the Death Penalty
Title Deterrence and the Death Penalty PDF eBook
Author National Research Council
Publisher National Academies Press
Pages 144
Release 2012-05-26
Genre Law
ISBN 0309254167

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Many studies during the past few decades have sought to determine whether the death penalty has any deterrent effect on homicide rates. Researchers have reached widely varying, even contradictory, conclusions. Some studies have concluded that the threat of capital punishment deters murders, saving large numbers of lives; other studies have concluded that executions actually increase homicides; still others, that executions have no effect on murder rates. Commentary among researchers, advocates, and policymakers on the scientific validity of the findings has sometimes been acrimonious. Against this backdrop, the National Research Council report Deterrence and the Death Penalty assesses whether the available evidence provides a scientific basis for answering questions of if and how the death penalty affects homicide rates. This new report from the Committee on Law and Justice concludes that research to date on the effect of capital punishment on homicide rates is not useful in determining whether the death penalty increases, decreases, or has no effect on these rates. The key question is whether capital punishment is less or more effective as a deterrent than alternative punishments, such as a life sentence without the possibility of parole. Yet none of the research that has been done accounted for the possible effect of noncapital punishments on homicide rates. The report recommends new avenues of research that may provide broader insight into any deterrent effects from both capital and noncapital punishments.

End of Its Rope

End of Its Rope
Title End of Its Rope PDF eBook
Author Brandon Garrett
Publisher Harvard University Press
Pages 343
Release 2017-09-25
Genre History
ISBN 0674970993

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An awakening -- Inevitability of innocence -- Mercy vs. justice -- The great American death penalty decline -- The defense lawyering effect -- Murder insurance -- The other death penalty -- The execution decline -- End game -- The triumph of mercy

Courting Death

Courting Death
Title Courting Death PDF eBook
Author Carol S. Steiker
Publisher Harvard University Press
Pages 401
Release 2016-11-07
Genre History
ISBN 0674737423

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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

Slavery and the Death Penalty

Slavery and the Death Penalty
Title Slavery and the Death Penalty PDF eBook
Author Bharat Malkani
Publisher
Pages 232
Release 2020-12-18
Genre Antislavery movements
ISBN 9780367899035

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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.

DeathQuest

DeathQuest
Title DeathQuest PDF eBook
Author Robert M. Bohm
Publisher Routledge
Pages 457
Release 2011-08-15
Genre Political Science
ISBN 1317522915

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This fourth edition of the first true textbook on the death penalty engages the reader with a full account of the arguments and issues surrounding capital punishment. The book begins with the history of the death penalty from colonial to modern times, and then examines the moral and legal arguments for and against capital punishment. It also provides an overview of major Supreme Court decisions and describes the legal process behind the death penalty. In addressing these issues, the author reviews recent developments in death penalty law and procedure, including ramifications of newer case law, such as that regarding using lethal injection as a method of execution. The author’s motivation has been to understand what motivates the "deathquest" of the American people, leading a large percentage of the public to support the death penalty. The book will educate readers so that whatever their death penalty opinions are, they are informed ones.

Imprisoned by the Past

Imprisoned by the Past
Title Imprisoned by the Past PDF eBook
Author Jeffrey L. Kirchmeier
Publisher
Pages 450
Release 2015
Genre Law
ISBN 0199967938

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In 1987, the United States Supreme Court decided a case that could have ended the death penalty in the United States. Imprisoned by the Past: Warren McCleskey and the American Death Penalty examines the long history of the American death penalty and its connection to the case of Warren McCleskey, revealing how that case marked a turning point for the history of the death penalty. In this book, Jeffrey L. Kirchmeier explores one of the most important Supreme Court cases in history, a case that raised important questions about race and punishment, and ultimately changed the way we understand the death penalty today. McCleskey's case resulted in one of the most important Supreme Court decisions in U.S. history, where the Court confronted evidence of racial discrimination in the administration of capital punishment. The case currently marks the last time that the Supreme Court had a realistic chance of completely striking down capital punishment. As such, the case also marked a turning point in the death penalty debate in the country. Going back nearly four centuries, this book connects McCleskey's life and crime to the issues that have haunted the American death penalty debate since the first executions by early settlers through the modern twenty-first century death penalty. Imprisoned by the Past ties together three unique American stories. First, the book considers the changing American death penalty across centuries where drastic changes have occurred in the last fifty years. Second, the book discusses the role that race played in that history. And third, the book tells the story of Warren McCleskey and how his life and legal case brought together the other two narratives.