Download or read book Last Words of the Executed written by Robert K. Elder and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-05-15 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Some beg for forgiveness. Others claim innocence. At least three cheer for their favorite football teams. Death waits for us all, but only those sentenced to death know the day and the hour—and only they can be sure that their last words will be recorded for posterity. Last Words of the Executed presents an oral history of American capital punishment, as heard from the gallows, the chair, and the gurney. The product of seven years of extensive research by journalist Robert K. Elder, the book explores the cultural value of these final statements and asks what we can learn from them. We hear from both the famous—such as Nathan Hale, Joe Hill, Ted Bundy, and John Brown—and the forgotten, and their words give us unprecedented glimpses into their lives, their crimes, and the world they inhabited. Organized by era and method of execution, these final statements range from heartfelt to horrific. Some are calls for peace or cries against injustice; others are accepting, confessional, or consoling; still others are venomous, rage-fueled diatribes. Even the chills evoked by some of these last words are brought on in part by the shared humanity we can’t ignore, their reminder that we all come to the same end, regardless of how we arrive there. Last Words of the Executed is not a political book. Rather, Elder simply asks readers to listen closely to these voices that echo history. The result is a riveting, moving testament from the darkest corners of society.
Download or read book Last Words and the Death Penalty written by Scott Vollum and published by LFB Scholarly Publishing. This book was released on 2008 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vollum analyzes the content of the last statements of the condemned and statements made by co-victims; he seek to "give voice" to these two different groups. Vollum finds that the most dominant themes among the condemned center around transformation, redemption, and positive messages of connection to others. The most dominant themes of co-victims are more conflicting with a mix of frustration with the death penalty process, relief that it is over, and the desire for justice or revenge. Through their own words, we learn that the death penalty is neither a soothing salve for the pain and suffering of co-victims nor simply an extraction of evil and irredeemable criminals.
Download or read book Let the Lord Sort Them written by Maurice Chammah and published by Crown. This book was released on 2021-01-26 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Arbitrary Death written by Rick Unklesbay and published by Wheatmark, Inc.. This book was released on 2019-05-10 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over a career spanning nearly four decades, Rick Unklesbay has tried over one hundred murder cases before juries that ended with sixteen men and women receiving the death sentence. Arbitrary Death depicts some of the most horrific murders in Tucson, Arizona, the author's prosecution of those cases, and how the death penalty was applied. It provides the framework to answer the questions: Why is America the only Western country to still use the death penalty? Can a human-run system treat those cases fairly and avoid unconstitutional arbitrariness? It is an insider's view from someone who has spent decades prosecuting murder cases and who now argues that the death penalty doesn't work and our system is fundamentally flawed. With a rational, balanced approach, Unklesbay depicts cases that represent how different parts of the criminal justice system are responsible for the arbitrary nature of the death penalty and work against the fair application of the law. The prosecution, trial courts, juries, and appellate courts all play a part in what ultimately is a roll of the dice as to whether a defendant lives or dies. Arbitrary Death is for anyone who wonders why and when its government seeks to legally take the life of one of its citizens. It will have you questioning whether you can support a system that applies death as an arbitrary punishment -- and often decades after the sentence was given.
Download or read book Death Watch written by Lane Nelson and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The topics covered in this volume include: how capital cases are different in the legal process how death penalty offenders are selected the selective application of the death penalty to women and juveniles problems in providing competent counsel to death penalty defendants medical issues related to organ donation and physician participation in executions the execution of blacks for rape in the South how the death penalty was imposed and carried out in the past reflections on death row life by inmates under death sentence the last words of men and women before execution the dilemma of defending the innocent on death row feature articles on two Louisiana inmates, Antonio James and John A. Brown, Jr., executed in 1996 and 1997 the ethics of the death penalty today
Download or read book Texas Death Row written by Bill Crawford and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008-01-29 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A chilling catalog of the men and women who have paid the ultimate price for their crimes The death penalty is one of the most hotly contested and longest-standing issues in American politics, and no place is more symbolic of that debate than Texas. Since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1977, Texas has put more than 390 prisoners to death, far more than any other state. Texas Death Row puts faces to those condemned men and women, with stark details on their crimes, sentencing, last meals, and last words. Definitive and objective, Texas Death Row will provide ample fuel for readers on both sides of the death penalty debate.
Download or read book Uncle Charlie written by Marc Asnin and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Raw, unflinching images that tell the story of one man's struggle with mental illness, poverty, drug addiction, and profound isolation
Download or read book Jesus on Death Row written by Prof. Mark Osler and published by Abingdon Press. This book was released on 2010-09-01 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does the most infamous criminal proceeding in history--the trial of Jesus of Nazareth--have to tell us about capital punishment in the United States? Jesus Christ was a prisoner on death row. If that statement surprises you, consider this fact: of all the roles that Jesus played--preacher, teacher, healer, mentor, friend--none features as prominently in the gospels as this one, a criminal indicted and convicted of a capital offense. Now consider another fact: the arrest, trial, and execution of Jesus bear remarkable similarities to the American criminal justice system, especially in capital cases. From the use of paid informants to the conflicting testimony of witnesses to the denial of clemency, the elements in the story of Jesus' trial mirror the most common components in capital cases today. Finally, consider a question: How might we see capital punishment in this country differently if we realized that the system used to condemn the Son of God to death so closely resembles the system we use in capital cases today? Should the experience of Jesus' trial, conviction, and execution give us pause as we take similar steps to place individuals on death row today? These are the questions posed by this surprising, challenging, and enlightening book
Download or read book Dead Man Walking written by Helen Prejean and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-02-02 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A profoundly moving spiritual journey through our system of capital punishment and an unprecedented look at the human consequences of the death penalty • "Stunning moral clarity.” —The Washington Post Book World • Basis for the award-winning major motion picture starring Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn "Sister Prejean is an excellent writer, direct and honest and unsentimental. . . . She almost palpably extends a hand to her readers.” —The New York Times Book Review In 1982, Sister Helen Prejean became the spiritual advisor to Patrick Sonnier, the convicted killer of two teenagers who was sentenced to die in the electric chair of Louisiana’s Angola State Prison. In the months before Sonnier’s death, the Roman Catholic nun came to know a man who was as terrified as he had once been terrifying. She also came to know the families of the victims and the men whose job it was to execute—men who often harbored doubts about the rightness of what they were doing. Out of that dreadful intimacy comes a profoundly moving spiritual journey through our system of capital punishment. Here Sister Helen confronts both the plight of the condemned and the rage of the bereaved, the fears of a society shattered by violence and the Christian imperative of love. On its original publication in 1993, Dead Man Walking emerged as an unprecedented look at the human consequences of the death penalty. Now, some two decades later, this story—which has inspired a film, a stage play, an opera and a musical album—is more gut-wrenching than ever, stirring deep and life-changing reflection in all who encounter it.
Download or read book End of Its Rope written by Brandon Garrett and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2017-09-25 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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
Download or read book The Last Lawyer written by John Temple and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2010-02-26 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Last Lawyer is the true, inside story of how an idealistic legal genius and his diverse band of investigators and fellow attorneys fought to overturn a client's final sentence. Ken Rose has handled more capital appeals cases than almost any other attorney in the United States. The Last Lawyer chronicles Rose's decade-long defense of Bo Jones, a North Carolina farmhand convicted of a 1987 murder. Rose called this his most frustrating case in twenty-five years, and it was one that received scant attention from judges or journalists. The Jones case bares the thorniest issues surrounding capital punishment. Inadequate legal counsel, mental retardation, mental illness, and sketchy witness testimony stymied Jones's original defense. Yet for many years, Rose's advocacy gained no traction, and Bo Jones came within three days of his execution. The book follows Rose through a decade of setbacks and small triumphs as he gradually unearthed the evidence he hoped would save his client's life. At the same time, Rose also single-handedly built a nonprofit law firm that became a major force in the death penalty debate raging across the South. The Last Lawyer offers unprecedented access to the inner workings of a capital defense team. Based on four-and-a half years of behind-the-scenes reporting by a journalism professor and nonfiction author, The Last Lawyer tells the unforgettable story of a lawyer's fight for justice.
Download or read book The Last Day of a Condemned Man written by Victor Hugo and published by Graphic Arts Books. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Last Day of a Condemned Man (1829) is a short novel by Victor Hugo. Having witnessed several executions by guillotine as a young man, Hugo devoted himself in his art and political life to opposing the death penalty in France. Praised by Dostoevsky as “absolutely the most real and truthful of everything that Hugo wrote,” The Last Day of a Condemned Man is a powerful story from an author who defined nineteenth century French literature. If you knew when and where you would die, how would you spend your final moments? For Hugo’s unnamed narrator, such an existential question is made reality. Sentenced to death for an unspecified crime, he reflects on his life as its last seconds wane in the shadows of a cramped prison cell. Recording his emotional state, observations, and conversations with a priest and fellow prisoner, the condemned man forces us to not only recognize his humanity, but question our own. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Victor Hugo’s The Last Day of a Condemned Man is a classic work of French literature reimagined for modern readers.
Download or read book Killing McVeigh written by Jody Lyneé Madeira and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2012-06-11 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh detonated a two-ton truck bomb that felled the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people. On June 11, 2001, an unprecedented 242 witnesses watched him die by lethal injection. In the aftermath of the bombings, American public commentary almost immediately turned to “closure” rhetoric. Reporters and audiences alike speculated about whether victim’s family members and survivors could get closure from memorial services, funerals, legislation, monuments, trials, and executions. But what does “closure” really mean for those who survive—or lose loved ones in—traumatic acts? In the wake of such terrifying events, is closure a realistic or appropriate expectation? In Killing McVeigh, Jody Lyneé Madeira uses the Oklahoma City bombing as a case study to explore how family members and other survivors come to terms with mass murder. The book demonstrates the importance of understanding what closure really is before naively asserting it can or has been reached.
Download or read book Death Row The Final Minutes written by Michelle Lyons and published by Bonnier Publishing Ltd.. This book was released on 2018-05-03 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: IN 12 YEARS, MICHELLE LYONS WITNESSED NEARLY 300 EXECUTIONS. First as a reporter and then as a spokesperson for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Michelle was a frequent visitor to Huntsville's Walls Unit, where she recorded and relayed the final moments of death row inmates' lives before they were put to death by the state. Michelle was in the death chamber as some of the United States' most notorious criminals, including serial killers, child murderers and rapists, spoke their last words on earth, while a cocktail of lethal drugs surged through their veins. Michelle supported the death penalty, before misgivings began to set in as the executions mounted. During her time in the prison system, and together with her dear friend and colleague, Larry Fitzgerald, she came to know and like some of the condemned men and women she saw die. She began to query the arbitrary nature of the death penalty and ask the question: do executions make victims of all of us? An incredibly powerful and unique look at the complex story of capital punishment, as told by those whose lives have been shaped by it, Death Row: The Final Minutes is an important take on crime and punishment at a fascinating point in America's political history.
Download or read book By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed written by Edward Feser and published by Ignatius Press. This book was released on 2017-05-10 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Catholic Church has in recent decades been associated with political efforts to eliminate the death penalty. It was not always so. This timely work reviews and explains the Catholic Tradition regarding the death penalty, demonstrating that it is not inherently evil and that it can be reserved as a just form of punishment in certain cases. Drawing upon a wealth of philosophical, scriptural, theological, and social scientific arguments, the authors explain the perennial teaching of the Church that capital punishment can in principle be legitimate—not only to protect society from immediate physical danger, but also to administer retributive justice and to deter capital crimes. The authors also show how some recent statements of Church leaders in opposition to the death penalty are prudential judgments rather than dogma. They reaffirm that Catholics may, in good conscience, disagree about the application of the death penalty. Some arguments against the death penalty falsely suggest that there has been a rupture in the Church's traditional teaching and thereby inadvertently cast doubt on the reliability of the Magisterium. Yet, as the authors demonstrate, the Church's traditional teaching is a safeguard to society, because the just use of the death penalty can be used to protect the lives of the innocent, inculcate a horror of murder, and affirm the dignity of human beings as free and rational creatures who must be held responsible for their actions. By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed challenges contemporary Catholics to engage with Scripture, Tradition, natural law, and the actual social scientific evidence in order to undertake a thoughtful analysis of the current debate about the death penalty.
Download or read book Last Words from Death Row written by Norma Herrera and published by Nightengale Press. This book was released on 2007-02 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Norma Herrera lived her brother's personal hell as he waited on Death Row for the courts to decide if the new evidence that proved Leonel Herrera's innocence would save his life. Her book fulfills her last promise to Leo: to tell his story, to tell the truth. "Federal habeas courts do not sit to correct errors of fact but to ensure the individuals are not imprisoned in violation of the Constitution," it said. In other words, being falsely imprisoned is not a violation of your rights. Herrera was executed four months after the ruling. In his final statement he said: "I am innocent, innocent, innocent. I am an innocent man, and something very wrong is taking place tonight." Norma Herrera's book documents court events and press coverage. She recounts the tribulations she and her family suffered as they worked to free Leonel Herrera from his fate. If the all the court proceedings, including the Supreme Court's decision prior to Leo's execution represent the visible tip of the death penalty iceberg, LAST WORDS FROM DEATH ROW exposes the enormous human tragedy that resides below the surface. Her questions drive a powerful wedge between the legal process in capital cases and the truth. Why do the guilty go unpunished? When is innocence not enough to free a convicted man? Does Truth not prevail in the American Justice system? Who pays? We all do. Who is next?
Download or read book Peculiar Institution written by David Garland and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2011-02-01 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The U.S. death penalty is a peculiar institution, and a uniquely American one. Despite its comprehensive abolition elsewhere in the Western world, capital punishment continues in dozens of American states– a fact that is frequently discussed but rarely understood. The same puzzlement surrounds the peculiar form that American capital punishment now takes, with its uneven application, its seemingly endless delays, and the uncertainty of its ever being carried out in individual cases, none of which seem conducive to effective crime control or criminal justice. In a brilliantly provocative study, David Garland explains this tenacity and shows how death penalty practice has come to bear the distinctive hallmarks of America’s political institutions and cultural conflicts. America’s radical federalism and local democracy, as well as its legacy of violence and racism, account for our divergence from the rest of the West. Whereas the elites of other nations were able to impose nationwide abolition from above despite public objections, American elites are unable– and unwilling– to end a punishment that has the support of local majorities and a storied place in popular culture. In the course of hundreds of decisions, federal courts sought to rationalize and civilize an institution that too often resembled a lynching, producing layers of legal process but also delays and reversals. Yet the Supreme Court insists that the issue is to be decided by local political actors and public opinion. So the death penalty continues to respond to popular will, enhancing the power of criminal justice professionals, providing drama for the media, and bringing pleasure to a public audience who consumes its chilling tales. Garland brings a new clarity to our understanding of this peculiar institution– and a new challenge to supporters and opponents alike.
