Qualities of Mercy deals with the history of mercy in criminal justice. The writers probe the discretionary use of power and examine how it has been exercised to spare convicted criminals from the full might of the law. Looking at England, Canada, and Australia in periods when b…
Qualities of Mercy deals with the history of mercy in criminal justice. The writers probe the discretionary use of power and examine how it has been exercised to spare convicted criminals from the full might of the law. Looking at England, Canada, and Australia in periods when b…
The conventional wisdom is that the founders were avid death penalty supporters. In this fascinating and insightful examination of America's Eighth Amendment, law professor John D. Bessler explodes this myth and shows the founders' conflicting and ambivalent views on capital pun…
"In 1976, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Gregg v. Georgia that the death penalty was constitutional if it complied with certain specific provisions designed to ensure that it was reserved for the 'worst of the worst'. The same court had rejected the death penalty just four year…
While most western democracies have renounced the death penalty, capital punishment enjoys vast and growing support in the United States. A significant and vocal minority, however, continues to oppose it. Against Capital Punishment is the first full account of anti-death penalty…
"Nation states and communities throughout the world have reached certain decisions about capital punishment: It is the destruction of human life. It is ineffective as a deterrent for crime. It is an instrument the state uses to contain or eliminate its political adversaries. It …
"In the late 1950s, as the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. was at last gaining ground, 16 soldiers sat confined in basement cells on death row in the army's Fort Leavenworth maximum security prison in Kansas. Exactly eight were white and eight were black. All of the white sold…
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, f…
"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, …
"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, …