Title: What We Write About When We Write about the Death Penalty—A Review of Recent Books and Literature on Capital Punishment
Year: 1999
Author: Leigh B. Bienen
Publisher: Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology
Issue: Volume 89, No. 2, pp. 751-770
Description: These new books focusing on capital punishment issues come at a time when if there is not renewed interest in the death penalty, there is at least some surprise, among advocates, academics, and toilers in the criminal justice system, that we find ourselves where we are at the end of the millennium.
AMERICA’ S EXPERIMENT WITH CAPITAL PUNISHMENT: REFLECTIONS ON THE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE OF THE ULTIM PENAL SANCTION (James R. Acker, Robert M. Bohm, and Charles Lanier eds., Carolina Academic Press 1998) 586 pp.
THE DEATH PENALTY IN AMERICA: CURRENT CONTROVERSIES (Hugo Bedau ed., Oxford University Press, 1997) 524 pp.
John D. Bessler, DEATH IN THE DARK: MIDNIGHT EXECUTIONS IN AMERICA (Northeastern University Press 1997) 200 pp.
Donald A. Cabana, DEATH AT MIDNIGHT: THE CONFESSION OF AN EXECUTIONER (Northeastern University Press 1996) 319 pp.
Mark Constanzo, JUST REVENGE: COSTS AND CONSEQUENCES OF THE DEATH PENALTY (St. Martin’s Press, 1997) 206 pp.
Roger Hood, THE DEATH PENALTY: A WORLD-WIDE PERSPECTIVE (Oxford University Press, 2d rev. ed. 1996)
Robert Johnson, DEATH WORK: A STUDY OF THE MODERN EXECUTION PROCESS (Wadsworth Publishing, 2d ed. 1998) 262 pp.
Louis P. Rojman & Jeffrey Reiman, THE DEATH PENALTY-FOR AND AGAINST (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers 1998) 175 pp.
THE KILLING STATE: CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IN LAW, POLITICS, AND CULTURE (Austin Sarat ed., Oxford University Press, 1999) 263
These new books focusing on capital punishment issues come at a time when if there is not renewed interest in the death penalty, ther is at least some surprise, among advocates, academics, and toilers i the criminal justice system, that we find ourselves where we are a the end of the millennium. Capital punishment is here to stay for t foreseeable future; thirty eight states have reenacted capital statute The number of those executed since 1976 has passed 500.2 Ove 3,000 people, mostly men, who are disproportionately from the ran of the poor and ethnic minorities, await execution on state dea rows.3 That there are so many on death row, and that the technic ties of executions-as opposed to technicalities of law or constitutional guarantees of due process-preoccupy the courts at present, part of the surprise…
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