The Penalty

The Penalty
Author: Mal Peet
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Total Pages: 187
Release: 2016-11-08
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 0763687782

From the award-winning author of TAMAR, a time-shifting thriller about a vanishing soccer star, occult secrets, and the dark history of slavery. As the city of San Juan pulses to summer’s sluggish beat, its teenage soccer prodigy, El Brujito, the Little Magician, vanishes without a trace -- right after he misses a penalty kick and loses a big game for his team. Paul Faustino, South America’s top sports reporter, is reluctantly drawn into the mystery of the athlete’s disappearance. As a story of corruption and murder unfolds, Faustino is forced to confront the bitter history of slavery and the power of the occult. A deftly woven mystery flush with soccer and suspense, this gripping novel is a thrilling read not to be missed.

The Penalty

The Penalty
Author: J. Michael Shea
Publisher: iUniverse
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2001-04-11
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0595178170

This gripping legal thriller illustrates the ambiguity of justice, where an innocent man dangles fourteen years on death row before gaining his hard-won freedom. Based on the true story of Joe Brown and his young, court-appointed defense attorney, this book examines the illusion of a neutral or impartial jury, particularly in a capital murder trial of a young black man in the South. The attorney’s insight into the lengthy appeals process causes one to question the ultimate sentence of society—the death penalty—and the fight for life that ensues once it has been mandated. In broad strokes, this legal thriller paints a picture of the U.S. criminal justice system. Upon closer inspection, individual brush strokes reveal the underlying themes of racial and socio-economic prejudice, the concept of a “neutral” jury in capital murder trials, and the “good old boy” brand of justice so prevalent, still, in law enforcement agencies, courtrooms and judges’ chambers, not just in Florida, where this story takes place, but throughout the United States. Although this is a work of fiction, and some of the names and places have been changed, the details of this story closely reflect the original case history and trial circumstances.

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

The Death Penalty
Author: Louis J. Palmer
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 304
Release: 1998-01-01
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9780786404445

Examines and explains the laws of capital punishment as they exist in the United States as of 1998, focusing primarily on issues that are resolved after a defendant has been convicted of a capital crime.

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.

The Penalty for Success

The Penalty for Success
Author: Josephine Bolling McCall
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2015-05-10
Genre:
ISBN: 9780692406229

The Penalty For Success: My Father Was Lynched In Lowndes County Alabama tells the story of the murder of a black man in 1940s Lowndes County, Alabama. It is a story that changes the traditional definition of "lynching" in America. Until recent years, a lynching was associated with murder by hanging, usually in the presence of a mob of people. Sometimes it also included severe mutilation and burning of the body. Josephine Bolling McCall's story of her father's murder presents convincing evidence that he was lynched, although he was not hanged, mutilated, or burned before a crowd of people. Elmore Bolling was shot six times in the front of his body with a pistol and once in the back with a shotgun. The presumption is that two shooters were involved. In exploring the events in her father's life, Jo McCall demonstrates that, not only was he lynched, but he was murdered simply because he was too prosperous to be a black man in rural Lowndes County, Alabama.In recounting her father's story, Mrs. McCall explores her ancestral roots, dating back to the pre-civil war era, and the evolution of her family to a status of entrepreneurs during the 1940s in the heart of the Alabama Black Belt. She places her narrative in the historical context of the Lowndes County she knew as a child and had to, in her words, "escape from" with her mother and siblings in order to save their lives. Through years of research, including interviews with relatives and elderly Lowndes County residents, Mrs. Bolling sought and found answers to many troubling questions that she had about her family, especially about events in her father's life. Her journey of discovery presents a revealing narrative of a time, a place, and a people that challenges us to rethink the reality of life for both blacks and whites in a rural, southern community.

In the Penalty Box

In the Penalty Box
Author: Lynn Rush
Publisher: Entangled: Teen
Total Pages: 375
Release: 2021-01-05
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 1682815838

Willow Figure skating was supposed to be my whole world. One unlucky injury and I’m down...but I’m definitely not out. I just need to rehab—a boatload of it. But who’d have thought I could do it on the boys’ hockey team? Of course, the infuriatingly hot captain of the team seems to think I’m nothing but sequins and twirls. Now the only thing a girl can do is put him in his place. Game on. Brodie Hockey is my whole world. I’ve worked my tail off getting my team in a position to win the championships—and impress major college scouts. So what’s a guy to do when a figure skater ends up as our new goalie? Of course, the distractingly sexy skater thinks I’m a testosterone-laced bro with a competitive streak. But I’m almost certain she’s just biding her time to heal, then she’s gone. Game over.

Public Opinion and the Penalty for Murder

Public Opinion and the Penalty for Murder
Author: Homicide Review Advisory Group (HOMRAG)
Publisher: Waterside Press
Total Pages: 32
Release: 2011-12-08
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1908162104

The Homicide Review Advisory Group (HomRAG) was set up in 2004 to run alongside the work of the Law Commission which was reviewing aspects of the law on murder. This multidisciplinary group was convened on the initiative of Sir Louis Blom-Cooper QC and Professor Terence Morris; and was initially chaired by the late Very Reverend Colin Slee, Dean of Southwark and now by Sir Louis. In essence, the group is concerned with promoting a just law of murder. As part of this aim and in view of developments in Parliament in late-2011 and continuing into 2012 concerning sentencing and the use of mandatory sentences in particular, HomRAG has published its first report for consideration by law-makers and other interested parties. Harking back to the abolition of capital punishment, the group argue that the mandatory life sentence for murder is both unjust and outdated; a compromise arrived at in the 1960s in order to ensure that abolition of the death penalty made its way through both Houses of Parliament. Neither it nor the present system of tariff-setting allow for sentences which match the seriousness of individual crimes, so that, e.g. a single 'mercy killing' attracts the same penalty as that for a murder which is part of a course of serial killings. Further, the indefinite and misleading nature of the life sentence - which may or may not involve a life spent in prison - is both unjust and incomprehensible to even better-informed lay people. Building on modern research which shows that the public and public opinion are nowadays by no means averse to such a change, the report urges that the time has come for a move to fixed sentences for murder as with any other individual crime so that the exact circumstances of offences can be properly reflected by the courts.

The Penalty is Death

The Penalty is Death
Author: Marlin Shipman
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
Total Pages: 350
Release: 2002
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0826263054

In 1872 Susan Eberhart was convicted of murder for helping her lover to kill his wife. The Atlanta Constitution ran a story about her hanging in Georgia that covered slightly more than four full columns of text. In an editorial sermon about her, the Constitution said that Miss Eberhart not only committed murder, but also committed adultery and "violated the sanctity of marriage." An 1890 article in the Elko Independent said of Elizabeth Potts, who was hanged for murder, "To her we look for everything that is gentle and kind and tender; and we can scarcely conceive her capable of committing the highest crime known to the law." Indeed, at the time, this attitude was also applied to women in general. By 1998 the press's and society's attitudes had changed dramatically. A columnist from Texas wrote that convicted murderess Karla Faye Tucker should not be spared just because she was a woman. The author went on to say that women could be just as violent and aggressive as men; the idea that women are defenseless and need men's protection "is probably the last vestige of institutionalized sexism that needs to be rubbed out."

In the Bin

In the Bin
Author: Lloyd Freeberg
Publisher: Triumph Books
Total Pages: 231
Release: 2001-09-01
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1623684544

Hockey is best known for its “bad boys,” those players who spend as much time on the ice swinging punches as they do swinging their sticks. Here is an inside look at the exciting, suspenseful, sometimes outrageous world of an NHL game—on the ice and in the “sin bin.”