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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.

Tabla de contenidos provista por Syndetics

• Preface(p. ix)
• Acknowledgments(p. xi)
• I. Divergent Trends(p. 1)
• 1. The Peculiar Present of American Capital Punishment(p. 3)
• 2. More Than a Trend: Abolition in the Developed Nations(p. 16)
• 3. The Symbolic Transformation of American Capital Punishment(p. 42)
• II. Explaining the American Difference(p. 65)
• 4. Federalism and Its Discontents(p. 67)
• 5. The Vigilante Tradition and Modern Executions(p. 89)
• 6. The Consequences of Contradictory Values(p. 119)
• III. Capital Punishment in the American Future(p. 141)
• 7. The No-Win 1990s(p. 143)
• 8. The Beginning of the End(p. 179)
• Appendix A Statistical Materials on Lynchings and Executions(p. 207)
• Appendix B Reported Frequencies of National Death Penalty Policy, 1980 to 2001(p. 213)
• Appendix C Death Row and Execution Statistics(p. 227)
• Appendix D New Survey Analysis Materials(p. 229)
• Appendix E Justified Killings by Citizens and Police, by State(p. 237)
• Appendix F Review of Death Penalty Exoneration Data from the Death Penalty Information Center(p. 241)
• References(p. 243)
• Index(p. 251)

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Library Journal Review

This work by Zimring (director, Earl Warren Legal Inst., Univ. of California, Berkeley) is essentially a sociological analysis of American capital punishment that closely parallels, but greatly enhances, Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell's Who Owns Death, which focuses on the psychology of the jury; Zimring's documents the capital punishment process as it varies from one region to another. Differences, the author concludes, derive from the uniquely American belief that official punishments are the extension of the community rather than a function of the government. To explain the striking difference in death sentence outcomes between Texas and California, for example, he creates a novel and bold regional sociology of capital punishment. Although controversial, this work is undoubtedly at the forefront of the debate over interstate variations in death penalty jurisprudence. Essential for law libraries.-Philip Y. Blue, New York State Supreme Court Criminal Branch Law Lib., First Judicial Dist., New York (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

CHOICE Review

Zimring (law, Univ. of California, Berkeley) provides some excellent insights into the death penalty mentality in the US. Before capital punishment can be abolished in this country, its political and sociological place needs to be understood. For example, why is the US the only Western country that continues to use the death penalty? Why have Europeans come to see the death penalty as a human rights issue? Furthermore, Americans not only stand alone among Western nations, but they are conflicted themselves. What do Americans believe about the death penalty? Why do they believe it? Zimring insightfully examines another feature peculiar to the US that often goes unmentioned--a vigilante tradition that can be roughly associated with the existence of the death penalty, especially in the South. The concluding chapter provides a prescription for what needs to be done if the death penalty is to be abolished. For Zimring, the question is not whether that will happen, but when. For those well-informed about the realities of the death penalty and lay readers who want to gain a better understanding about those realities. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. All levels and libraries. M. A. Foley Marywood University

Notas de autor provistas por Syndetics

Franklin Zimring is the William G. Simon Professor of Law and Director of the Criminal Justice Research Program at the University of California, Berkeley.