End of Its Rope : How Killing the Death Penalty Can Revive Criminal Justice / Brandon L. Garrett.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Garrett, Brandon, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Capital punishment--United States.

Capital punishment.

Judicial error--United States.

Judicial error.

Discrimination in capital punishment--United States.

Discrimination in capital punishment.

Defense (Criminal procedure)--United States.

Defense (Criminal procedure).

Evidence, Criminal--United States.

Evidence, Criminal.

Life imprisonment--United States.

Life imprisonment.

Criminals--Rehabilitation--United States.

Criminals.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (343 pages)

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2018]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

"When Henry McCollum was condemned to death in 1983 in rural North Carolina, death sentences were commonplace. In 2015, DNA tests set McCollum free. By then, death sentences were as rare as lightning strikes. To most observers this national trend came as a surprise. What changed? Brandon Garrett hand-collected and analyzed national data, looking for causes and implications of this turnaround. End of Its Rope explains what he found, and why the death penalty's demise can be the catalyst for criminal justice reform. No single factor put the death penalty on the road to extinction, Garrett concludes. Death row exonerations fostered rising awareness of errors in death penalty cases, at the same time that a decline in murder rates eroded law-and-order arguments. Defense lawyers radically improved how they litigate death cases when given adequate resources. More troubling, many states replaced the death penalty with what amounts to a virtual death sentence--life without possibility of parole. Today, the death penalty hangs on in a few scattered counties where prosecutors cling to entrenched habits and patterns of racial bias. We can celebrate the death penalty's demise, and we can learn from it. The failed death penalty experiment teaches us how inept lawyering, overzealous prosecution, race discrimination, wrongful convictions, and excessive punishments undermine the pursuit of justice. Garrett makes a strong closing case for what a future criminal justice system might look like if these injustices were remedied"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

1. An Awakening

2. Inevitability of Innocence

3. Mercy vs. Justice

4. The Great American Death Penalty Decline

5. The Defense-Lawyering Effect

6. Murder Insurance

7. The Other Death Penalty

8. The Execution Decline

9. End Game

10. The Triumph of Mercy

Appendix

Notes

Acknowledgements

Index

Notes:

Includes bibiliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 07. Dez 2018)

ISBN:

9780674981966

0674981960

9780674981959

0674981952

OCLC:

1054868913