The Contradictions of American Capital PunishmentOxford University Press, 2003 - 258 halaman Why does the United States continue to employ the death penalty when fifty other developed democracies have abolished it? Why does capital punishment become more problematic each year? How can the death penalty conflict be resolved? In The Contradictions of American Capital Punishment, Frank Zimring reveals that the seemingly insoluble turmoil surrounding the death penalty reflects a deep and long-standing division in American values, a division that he predicts will soon bring about the end of capital punishment in our country. On the one hand, execution would seem to violate our nation's highest legal principles of fairness and due process. It sets us increasingly apart from our allies and indeed is regarded by European nations as a barbaric and particularly egregious form of American exceptionalism. On the other hand, the death penalty represents a deeply held American belief in violent social justice that sees the hangman as an agent of local control and safeguard of community values. Zimring uncovers the most troubling symptom of this attraction to vigilante justice in the lynch mob. He shows that the great majority of executions in recent decades have occurred in precisely those Southern states where lynchings were most common a hundred years ago. It is this legacy, Zimring suggests, that constitutes both the distinctive appeal of the death penalty in the United States and one of the most compelling reasons for abolishing it. Impeccably researched and engagingly written, Contradictions in American Capital Punishment casts a clear new light on America's long and troubled embrace of the death penalty. |
Isi
I Divergent Trends | 1 |
II Explaining the American Difference | 65 |
III Capital Punishment in the American Future | 141 |
Statistical Materials on Lynchings and Executions | 207 |
Reported Frequencies of National Death Penalty Policy 1980 to 2001 | 213 |
Death Row and Execution Statistics | 227 |
New Survey Analysis Materials | 229 |
Justified Killings by Citizens and Police by State | 237 |
Review of Death Penalty Exoneration Data from the Death Penalty Information Center | 241 |
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abolish the death abolitionist alty American capital punishment Amnesty International anti–death penalty appeal attitudes campaign capital trials Chapter citizens closure conduct conflict Council of Europe crime criminal justice culture death pen Death Penalty Information death penalty policy death penalty system death row death sentences decades defendant’s delay developed nations distrust due process ecution European evidence execution rates exonerations federal courts Figure Furman Gallup Organization Georgia governmental Gregg habeas corpus homicide human rights Illinois important innocent defendants ishment issue judicial killing lawyers lethal injection low-lynching lynching history major ment modern executions moral moratorium murder North Korea number of executions pattern Penalty Information Center percent political poll procedural defaults produced prosecutors public opinion question rates of execution region risk South Southern standards state’s substantial Texas Timothy McVeigh tion twentieth century twenty-first century U.S. Supreme Court United vigilante tradition vigilante values Western Europe