Teens and the Death Penalty

Teens and the Death Penalty
Author: Elaine Landau
Publisher:
Total Pages: 116
Release: 1992
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 9780894902970

Chronicles the history of the death penalty in America, with an emphasis on its application to teenagers.

The Death Penalty for Teens

The Death Penalty for Teens
Author: Nancy Day
Publisher: Enslow Publishing
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2000
Genre: Capital punishment
ISBN: 9780766013704

Examines both sides of the debate over whether teens under the age of eighteen should be sentenced to death for committing murder.

No Choirboy

No Choirboy
Author: Susan Kuklin
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 190
Release: 2013-10-01
Genre: Young Adult Nonfiction
ISBN: 1466853417

No Choirboy takes readers inside America's prisons, and allows inmates sentenced to death as teenagers to speak for themselves. In their own voices—raw and uncensored—they talk about their lives in prison, and share their thoughts and feelings about how they ended up there. Susan Kuklin also gets inside the system, exploring capital punishment itself and the intricacies and inequities of criminal justice in the United States. This is a searing, unforgettable read, and one that could change the way we think about crime and punishment. No Choirboy: Murder, Violence, and Teenagers on Death Row is a 2009 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.

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.

Trout

Trout
Author: Jeff Kunerth
Publisher: University Press of Florida
Total Pages: 287
Release: 2012-04-15
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 0813042895

On a cool Pensacola night in January 1991, just a few minutes before midnight, three teenagers pulled up to the Trout Auto Parts store. Patrick Bonifay, his body coursing with adrenaline, entered the store clad in a ski mask carrying a loaded gun, intent on carrying out a poorly laid plan. Little did he know that it was his life--as well as the lives of his companions--that was about to be forever changed. Bonifay, Clifford Barth, and Eddie Fordham were hired to kill Daniel Wells by Robin Archer, who blamed Wells for losing his job nine months prior. The plan was orchestrated by the then-twenty-seven-year-old Archer, who allegedly promised his seventeen-year-old nephew, Patrick, a suitcase full of money after the job was done. But Wells had called in sick that night, and an innocent man was covering his shift. In this shocking and thought-provoking volume, Jeff Kunerth recounts the events of that fateful night, the swift investigation of the murder, the trials and sentencing of the teens, and their subsequent lives within the Florida court and penal systems. Kunerth uses the story of the Trout Auto Parts murder and the lives of these boys to explore varying aspects of troubled adolescence, impulsive actions lasting but moments, and the national trend of trying juveniles as adults in court. They were boys every teenager can identify with and circumstances every parent fears. Their story provides a disturbing, sad, and compelling inside look at the dynamics of individuals--not yet adults, but no longer children--who commit senseless, impulsive crimes. Trout is that rare book that continues to haunt you long after you've finished reading it.

Death Penalty

Death Penalty
Author: JoAnn Bren Guernsey
Publisher: Twenty-First Century Books
Total Pages: 164
Release: 2009-09-01
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 0761340793

Discusses the history of execution, the process from sentencing to execution, moral issues involved in the death penalty, arguments for and against it, and the shrinking number of countries with it.

Executing Grace

Executing Grace
Author: Shane Claiborne
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2016-06-07
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0062347365

In this reasoned exploration of justice, retribution, and redemption, the champion of the new monastic movement, popular speaker, and author of the bestselling The Irresistible Revolution offers a powerful and persuasive appeal for the abolition of the death penalty. The Bible says an eye for an eye. But is the state’s taking of a life true—or even practical—punishment for convicted prisoners? In this thought-provoking work, Shane Claiborne explores the issue of the death penalty and the contrast between punitive justice and restorative justice, questioning our notions of fairness, revenge, and absolution. Using an historical lens to frame his argument, Claiborne draws on testimonials and examples from Scripture to show how the death penalty is not the ideal of justice that many believe. Not only is a life lost, so too, is the possibility of mercy and grace. In Executing Grace, he reminds us of the divine power of forgiveness, and evokes the fundamental truth of the Gospel—that no one, even a criminal, is beyond redemption.

The Decline of the Death Penalty and the Discovery of Innocence

The Decline of the Death Penalty and the Discovery of Innocence
Author: Frank R. Baumgartner
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 10
Release: 2008-01-07
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1139469207

Since 1996, death sentences in America have declined by more than 60 percent, reversing a generation-long trend toward greater acceptance of capital punishment. In theory, most Americans continue to support the death penalty. But it is no longer seen as a theoretical matter. Prosecutors, judges, and juries across the country have moved in large numbers to give much greater credence to the possibility of mistakes - mistakes that in this arena are potentially fatal. The discovery of innocence, documented in this book through painstaking analyses of media coverage and with newly developed methods, has led to historic shifts in public opinion and to a sharp decline in use of the death penalty by juries across the country. A social cascade, starting with legal clinics and innocence projects, has snowballed into a national phenomenon that may spell the end of the death penalty in America.

Social Work, Criminal Justice, and the Death Penalty

Social Work, Criminal Justice, and the Death Penalty
Author: Lauren A. Ricciardelli
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2020-08-10
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0190937246

Social workers have their hands in a lot of big sociopolitical issues. When it comes to the death penalty, their involvement is especially crucial. Social workers might support those receiving the sentence, engage with the families of those sentenced, participate in mitigation work, examine the critical discourse (psychiatric, psychological, and legal) leading up to and after the sentence, contribute to research surrounding mental health as it relates to the criminal justice system, or even use social advocacy and policy practice to examine the death penalty. In Social Work, Criminal Justice, and the Death Penalty, professionals with backgrounds spanning, law, forensics, academia, and social work combine and explain their experiences surrounding this prominent social justice issue. The book is broken into three sections: Criminal Justice Considerations, Sociopolitical Considerations, and Applied Social Work Considerations. Across each section, chapters provide explicit implications for the social work professional in a criminal justice setting. The resulting volume equips beginning professionals and students with a holistic overview of the intersection of criminal justice and social justice.

The Death Penalty

The Death Penalty
Author: Ernest Van den Haag
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2013-06-29
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1489927875

From 1965 until 1980, there was a virtual moratorium on executions for capital offenses in the United States. This was due primarily to protracted legal proceedings challenging the death penalty on constitutional grounds. After much Sturm und Drang, the Supreme Court of the United States, by a divided vote, finally decided that "the death penalty does not invariably violate the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause of the Eighth Amendment." The Court's decisions, however, do not moot the controversy about the death penalty or render this excellent book irrelevant. The ball is now in the court of the Legislature and the Executive. Leg islatures, federal and state, can impose or abolish the death penalty, within the guidelines prescribed by the Supreme Court. A Chief Executive can commute a death sentence. And even the Supreme Court can change its mind, as it has done on many occasions and did, with respect to various aspects of the death penalty itself, durlog the moratorium period. Also, the people can change their minds. Some time ago, a majority, according to reliable polls, favored abolition. Today, a substantial majority favors imposition of the death penalty. The pendulum can swing again, as it has done in the past.