Catalog Search Results
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
In this vivid account of how his views on the death penalty have evolved, Turow describes his own experiences with capital punishment from his days as an impassioned young prosecutor to his recent service on the Illinois commission which investigated the administration of the death penalty and influenced Governor George Ryan's unprecedented commutation of the sentences of 164 death row inmates on his last day in office.
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
First published in 1829 at the beginning of Victor Hugo's literary career, "The Last Day of a Condemned Man" is one of the author's first mature works of fiction. It recounts the thoughts of a condemned man as the day of his execution draws near. Inspired by the sight of an executioner preparing the guillotine for another scheduled public execution, Hugo quickly wrote this moving and eloquent work describing the condemned man's final thoughts as he...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
How long did the guillotine's blade hang over the heads of French criminals? Was it abandoned in the late 1800s? Did French citizens of the early days of the twentieth century decry its brutality? No. The blade was allowed to do its work well into our own time. In 1974, Hamida Djandoubi brutally tortured 22 year-old Elisabeth Bousquet in an apartment in Marseille, putting cigarettes out on her body and lighting her on fire, finally strangling her...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"An innovative study of narrative construction in capital defense cases from management professor and death penalty expert. Since 1976, Texas has accounted for more than a third of the nation's 1,400 executions. In cases where the prosecutor seeks the death penalty in Texas, the defendant is sentenced to death 90 percent of the time. In West Texas in 2008, that rate was 98 percent. That's when the newly formed Regional Public Defenders Office for...
7) Criss cross
Author
Series
Alex Cross novels volume 27
Language
English
Description
"In a Virginia penitentiary, Detective Alex Cross and his partner, John Sampson, witness the execution of a killer they helped to convict. Hours later, they are called to the scene of a copycat crime. A note signed 'M' rests on the corpse. 'You messed up big time, Dr. Cross.' Was an innocent man just put to death? Alex soon realizes he may have much to answer for, as 'M' lures the detective out of the capital to the sites of multiple homicides, all...
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
When a violent crime is committed, some people believe the only fair punishment is for the perpetrator to be put to death. Others feel that this practice is inhumane and that no one should be deliberately killed, regardless of what he or she may have done. This volume examines the history of the death penalty, the ways it is administered, and the arguments for and against it. Chapter questions encourage discussion among readers, and detailed charts...
Author
Pub. Date
2024.
Language
English
Appears on these lists
Description
"Set in the tumultuous year of 1968 in southern Virginia, a racially-charged murder case sets a duo of white and Black lawyers against a deeply unfair system as they work to defend their wrongfully-accused Black defendants. When two wealthy white landowners are found dead, the whole country immediately thinks it must be Jerome Washington, the hired help, who killed them. He was standing over the bodies when the police responded to an anonymous call...
Author
Language
English
Description
"A powerful, revealing story of hope, love, justice, and the power of reading by a man who spent thirty years on death row for a crime he didn't commit"--
In 1985, Anthony Ray Hinton was arrested and charged with two counts of capital murder in Alabama. It was a case of mistaken identity, and Hinton believed that the truth would prove his innocence. Sentenced to death by electrocution, he spent his first three years at Holman State Prison full of...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"In this reasoned exploration of justice, retribution, and redemption, the champion of the new monastic movement, popular speaker, and author of the bestselling The Irresistible Revolution offers a powerful and persuasive appeal for the abolition of the death penalty. The Bible says an eye for an eye. But is the state's taking of a life true--or even practical--punishment for convicted prisoners? In this thought-provoking work, Shane Claiborne explores...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Gruesome Spectacles is a history of botched, mismanaged, and painful executions in the U.S. from 1890 to 2010. Using new research, Sarat traces the evolution of methods of execution that were employed during this time, and were meant to improve on the methods that went before, from hanging or firing squad to electrocution to gas and lethal injection. Even though each of these technologies was developed to "perfect" state killing by decreasing the...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Sixty-one-year-old Shelby Truman, a romance novelist, has received a request to visit her childhood friend, Eddie, who is on Death Row. Though mentally ill, Eddie is scheduled to be executed for the disturbing, brutal murders of his wife and unborn child. As Shelby travels home to Texas for the unnerving reunion, she steps back into memories of her past, recalling her five-decade-long relationship with Eddie in order to understand what led the beautiful...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Before 1850, all legal executions in the South were performed before crowds that could number in the thousands; the last legal public execution was in 1936. This study focuses on the shift from public executions to ones behind barriers, situating that change within our understandings of lynching and competing visions of justice and religion"--
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"In early 2013, Robert Gleason became the latest victim of the electric chair, a peculiarly American execution method. Shouting Pog mo thin ("Kiss my ass" in Gaelic) he grinned electricity shot through his system. When the current was switched off his body slumped against the leather restraints, and Gleeson, who had strangled two fellow inmates to ensure his execution was not postponed, was dead. The execution had gone flawlessly-not a guaranteed...
18) Twist of fate
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
New York Times best-selling author Mary Jo Putney weaves a romantic tale into a courtroom thriller, prompting Booklist to hail, "Move over John Grisham." High-powered corporate attorney Val Covington knows she should avoid mysterious guys like Rob Smith. But when Rob helps her in a frantic race against the clock to save a man wrongfully sent to death row, Val unearths long-buried secrets-and discovers an unexpected passion.
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"There have been many heroes and victims in the battle to abolish the death penalty, and Marie Deans fits into both of those categories. A South Carolina native who yearned to be a fiction writer, Marie was thrust by a combination of circumstances, including the murder of her beloved mother-in-law, into a world much stranger than fiction, a world in which minorities and the poor were selected to be sacrificed to what Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"The Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution's Bill of Rights prohibits the use of "cruel and unusual punishment." That phrase was written at a time when burning and beheading were still acceptable legal punishments in some places. Much has changed in America in two centuries. This easily accessible guide examines the context that inspired the Founding Fathers to include this phrase, as well as the concept of "evolving standards of decency." Interesting,...
Didn't find it?
Didn't find it in the Minuteman Library Network? Request it from other Massachusetts library systems.
Can't find what you are looking for? Recommend it to your local library as a future purchase. Suggest a Purchase