13 Ways of Looking at the Death Penalty

13 Ways of Looking at the Death Penalty
Author: Mario Marazziti
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Total Pages: 167
Release: 2015-03-24
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1609805682

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 is a tool of “justice” that disproportionality affects religious, social, and racial minorities. It is a sanction that cannot be fixed if unjustly applied. Yet the United States—along with countries notorious for human rights abuse—remains an advocate for the death penalty. In these thirteen pieces, Mario Marazziti exposes the profound inhumanity and irrationality of the death penalty in this country, and urges us to join virtually every other industrialized democracy in rendering capital punishment an abandoned practice belonging to a crueler time in human history. A polemical book, yes, yet one that brings together a wide range of stories to compel the heart as well the mind.

Let the Lord Sort Them

Let the Lord Sort Them
Author: Maurice Chammah
Publisher: Crown
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2021-01-26
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1524760277

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE • A deeply reported, searingly honest portrait of the death penalty in Texas—and what it tells us about crime and punishment in America “If you’re one of those people who despair that nothing changes, and dream that something can, this is a story of how it does.”—Anand Giridharadas, The New York Times Book Review WINNER OF THE J. ANTHONY LUKAS AWARD In 1972, the United States Supreme Court made a surprising ruling: the country’s death penalty system violated the Constitution. The backlash was swift, especially in Texas, where executions were considered part of the cultural fabric, and a dark history of lynching was masked by gauzy visions of a tough-on-crime frontier. When executions resumed, Texas quickly became the nationwide leader in carrying out the punishment. Then, amid a larger wave of criminal justice reform, came the death penalty’s decline, a trend so durable that even in Texas the punishment appears again close to extinction. In Let the Lord Sort Them, Maurice Chammah charts the rise and fall of capital punishment through the eyes of those it touched. We meet Elsa Alcala, the orphaned daughter of a Mexican American family who found her calling as a prosecutor in the nation’s death penalty capital, before becoming a judge on the state’s highest court. We meet Danalynn Recer, a lawyer who became obsessively devoted to unearthing the life stories of men who committed terrible crimes, and fought for mercy in courtrooms across the state. We meet death row prisoners—many of them once-famous figures like Henry Lee Lucas, Gary Graham, and Karla Faye Tucker—along with their families and the families of their victims. And we meet the executioners, who struggle openly with what society has asked them to do. In tracing these interconnected lives against the rise of mass incarceration in Texas and the country as a whole, Chammah explores what the persistence of the death penalty tells us about forgiveness and retribution, fairness and justice, history and myth. Written with intimacy and grace, Let the Lord Sort Them is the definitive portrait of a particularly American institution.

The Death Penalty's Denial of Fundamental Human Rights

The Death Penalty's Denial of Fundamental Human Rights
Author: John Bessler
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 387
Release: 2022-12-31
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1108845576

This book details how capital punishment violates universal human rights and traces the evolution of the world's understanding of torture.

The Culture of Capital Punishment in Japan

The Culture of Capital Punishment in Japan
Author: David T. Johnson
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 139
Release: 2019-11-18
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3030320863

This open access book provides a comparative perspective on capital punishment in Japan and the United States. Alongside the US, Japan is one of only a few developed democracies in the world which retains capital punishment and continues to carry out executions on a regular basis. There are some similarities between the two systems of capital punishment but there are also many striking differences. These include differences in capital jurisprudence, execution method, the nature and extent of secrecy surrounding death penalty deliberations and executions, institutional capacities to prevent and discover wrongful convictions, orientations to lay participation and to victim participation, and orientations to “democracy” and governance. Johnson also explores several fundamental issues about the ultimate criminal penalty, such as the proper role of citizen preferences in governing a system of punishment and the relevance of the feelings of victims and survivors.

The Death Penalty

The Death Penalty
Author: Megan Manzano
Publisher: Greenhaven Publishing LLC
Total Pages: 122
Release: 2017-12-15
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1534501991

Is capital punishment morally justified? Although the issue generates strong opinions, there are no easy answers when it comes to taking the life of a human being. Supporters of the death penalty believe it deters law-breaking and is the only punishment strong enough for horrific crimes such as child murder and genocide. Opponents argue that it violates human rights and point to its finality in the face of judicial system error and unfairness. This resource presents a fascinating progression of current viewpoints that reflect the many facets of the death penalty debate.

Just Revenge

Just Revenge
Author: Mark Costanzo
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 228
Release: 1997-10-15
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9780312179458

A professor of social psychology explores the history of execution in America, weighing its social costs, discussing its potential benefits and problems, and building a new model for understanding the politics behind the death penalty.

The Sun Does Shine

The Sun Does Shine
Author: Anthony Ray Hinton
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2018-03-27
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1250124719

"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"--

Thirteen Ways of Looking

Thirteen Ways of Looking
Author: Colum McCann
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 181
Release: 2015-10-13
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0812996739

NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY CHICAGO TRIBUNE AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • NPR • Los Angeles Times • The Boston Globe • The Seattle Times • The Independent In such acclaimed novels as Let the Great World Spin and TransAtlantic, National Book Award–winning author Colum McCann has transfixed readers with his precision, tenderness, and authority. Now, in his first collection of short fiction in more than a decade, McCann charts the territory of chance, and the profound and intimate consequences of even our smallest moments. “As it was, it was like being set down in the best of poems, carried into a cold landscape, blindfolded, turned around, unblindfolded, forced, then, to invent new ways of seeing.” In the exuberant title novella, a retired judge reflects on his life’s work, unaware as he goes about his daily routines that this particular morning will be his last. In “Sh’khol,” a mother spending Christmas alone with her son confronts the unthinkable when he disappears while swimming off the coast near their home in Ireland. In “Treaty,” an elderly nun catches a snippet of a news report in which it is revealed that the man who once kidnapped and brutalized her is alive, masquerading as an agent of peace. And in “What Time Is It Now, Where You Are?” a writer constructs a story about a Marine in Afghanistan calling home on New Year’s Eve. Deeply personal, subtly subversive, at times harrowing, and indeed funny, yet also full of comfort, Thirteen Ways of Looking is a striking achievement. With unsurpassed empathy for his characters and their inner lives, Colum McCann forges from their stories a profound tribute to our search for meaning and grace. The collection is a rumination on the power of storytelling in a world where language and memory can sometimes falter, but in the end do not fail us, and a contemplation of the healing power of literature. Praise for Thirteen Ways of Looking “Extraordinary . . . incandescent.”—Chicago Tribune “The irreducible mystery of human experience ties this small collection together, and in each of these stories McCann explores that theme in some strikingly effective ways. . . . [The first story] is as fascinating as it is poignant. . . . [The second] captures the mundane and mysterious aspects of shaping characters from the gray clay of words, placing them in realistic settings and breathing life into their lungs. . . . That he makes the story so emotionally compelling is a sign of his genius. . . . The most remarkable [piece] is Sh’khol. . . . Caught in the rushing currents of this drama, you know you’re reading a little masterpiece.”—The Washington Post “McCann is a writer of power and subtlety and beauty. . . . The powerful title story loiters in the mind long after you’ve read it.”—Sarah Lyall, The New York Times “[McCann] unspools complex and unforgettable stories in this, his first collection in more than a decade.”—The Boston Globe “McCann is a passionate writer whose impulse is always toward a generous understanding of his diverse characters.”—The Wall Street Journal “Powerful, profound, and deeply empathetic, McCann’s beautifully wrought writing in Thirteen Ways of Looking glides off the page.”—BuzzFeed “McCann weaves the magic that made Let the Great World Spin so acclaimed.”—The Huffington Post

Sant'Egidio's Dream

Sant'Egidio's Dream
Author: Roberto Morozzo della Rocca
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2024-05-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 164712431X

The story of an innovative program of treatment for AIDS in Africa that succeeded in the face of international development agencies’ “afro pessimism” Until this century, Western governments and foundations framing policies for AIDS relief in Africa maintained that prevention alone was a preferable alternative to prevention-plus-treatment, which would be costly and impractical in Africa, or would benefit only the prosperous and well-connected. Sant'Egidio’s Dream argues that this initial, failed approach to AIDS in African countries reflects a global moral blindness to the imperative to save lives–which was not lost on the Community of Sant’Egidio, an Italian, Catholic social movement rooted in “the gospel and friendship” and present in 70 countries. Drawing on two decades of peacemaking and humanitarian experience in Africa, the movement grasped the evidence that HIV, if treated, does not lead to AIDS and to death–and saw that treatment gives hope in Africa just as it does in the developed world. By enabling large numbers of people to live with a chronic disease, and involving family and neighbors in free and effective care, it offers a dream of a society surviving and even thriving in spite of HIV. In 2002, Sant Egidio established the DREAM (Drug Resource Enhancement Against AIDS and Malnutrition) project, a community-based approach to the AIDS crisis, rooted in medicine, epidemiology, and public health, that has proven effective in ten countries where it has been implemented–and has emerged as a model for healthcare in the global South.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man
Author: Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2011-06-08
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0307765652

"This is a book of stories," writes Henry Louis Gates, "and all might be described as 'narratives of ascent.'" As some remarkable men talk about their lives, many perspectives on race and gender emerge. For the notion of the unitary black man, Gates argues, is as imaginary as the creature that the poet Wallace Stevens conjured in his poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird." James Baldwin, Colin Powell, Harry Belafonte, Bill T. Jones, Louis Farrakhan, Anatole Broyard, Albert Murray -- all these men came from modest circumstances and all achieved preeminence. They are people, Gates writes, "who have shaped the world as much as they were shaped by it, who gave as good as they got." Three are writers -- James Baldwin, who was once regarded as the intellectual spokesman for the black community; Anatole Broyard, who chose to hide his black heritage so as to be seen as a writer on his own terms; and Albert Murray, who rose to the pinnacle of literary criticism. There is the general-turned-political-figure Colin Powell, who discusses his interactions with three United States presidents; there is Harry Belafonte, the entertainer whose career has been distinct from his fervent activism; there is Bill T. Jones, dancer and choreographer, whose fierce courage and creativity have continued in the shadow of AIDS; and there is Louis Farrakhan, the controversial religious leader. These men and others speak of their lives with candor and intimacy, and what emerges from this portfolio of influential men is a strikingly varied and profound set of ideas about what it means to be a black man in America today.