Description
Book SynopsisEssays offer a new challenge to the death penalty's legitimacy, in light of new empirical research and case studies, and against the backdrop of international law and recent changes in US domestic law.
Trade Review“Important and timely,
Beyond Repair? presents disturbing findings about the legal system’s inability to administer the death penalty fairly. Especially noteworthy for the new empirical data it brings to bear, this book presents a necessary—and unsettling—look at capital punishment in America today.”—Nadine Strossen, President, American Civil Liberties Union and Professor of Law, New York Law School
“In these essays some of our most knowledgeable students of capital punishment take a hard, no-nonsense look at how it actually operates and what drives America’s passionate refusal either to come to peace with the death penalty or give it up. Vital reading for whoever would understand why it can function only fitfully, peevishly, and perversely.”—Anthony G. Amsterdam, New York University School of Law
“This collection is an indispensable guide to the new learning on the death penalty, and to the reasons why capital punishment has suddenly become one of the nation's most pressing issues of public policy and debate.”—James S. Liebman, Columbia Law School
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction / Stephen P. Garvey
1 : Second Thoughts: Americans’ Views on the Death Penalty at the Turn of the Century / Samuel R. Gross & Phoebe C. Ellsworth
2 : Capital Punishment, Federal Courts, and the Writ of Habeas Corpus / Larry W. Yackle
3 : “Until I Can Be Sure”: How the Threat of Executing the Innocent Has Transformed the Death Penalty Debate / Ken Armstrong & Steve Mills
4 : Race and Capital Punishment / Sheri Lynn Johnson
5 : Lessons from the Capital Jury Project / John H. Blume, Theodore Eisenberg, & Stephen P. Garvey
6 : International Law and the Abolition of the Death Penalty / William A. Schabas
Postscript: The Peculiar Present of American Capital Punishment / Franklin E. Zimring
Contributors
Index
