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Overview"In his first book since the Pulitzer Prize - winning """"Polio: An American Story"""", renowned historian David Oshinsky takes a new and closer look at the Supreme Court's controversial and much-debated stances on capital punishment - in the landmark case of Furman v. Georgia. Career criminal William Furman shot and killed a homeowner during a 1967 burglary in Savannah, Georgia. Because it was a 'black-on-white' crime in the racially troubled South, it also was an open-and-shut case. The trial took less than a day, and the nearly all-white jury rendered a death sentence. Aided by the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund, Furman's African-American attorney, Bobby Mayfield, doggedly appealed the verdict all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which in 1972 overturned Furman's sentence by a narrow 5-4 vote, ruling that Georgia's capital punishment statute, and by implication all other state death-penalty laws, was so arbitrary and capricious as to violate the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against 'cruel and unusual punishment'. Furman effectively, if temporarily, halted capital punishment in the United States. Every death row inmate across the nation was resentenced to life in prison. The decision, however, did not rule the death penalty per se to be unconstitutional; rather, it struck down the laws that currently governed its application, leaving the states free to devise new ones that the Court might find acceptable. And this is exactly what happened. In the coming years, the Supreme Court would uphold an avalanche of state legislation endorsing the death penalty. Capital punishment would return stronger than ever, with many more defendants sentenced to death and eventually executed. Oshinsky demonstrates the troubling roles played by race and class and region in capital punishment. And he concludes by considering the most recent Supreme Court death-penalty cases involving minors and the mentally ill, as well as the impact of international opinion. Compact and engaging, Oshinsky's masterful study reflects a gift for empathy, an eye for the telling anecdote and portrait, and a talent for clarifying the complex and often confusing legal issues surrounding capital punishment." Full Product DetailsAuthor: David M. OshinskyPublisher: University Press of Kansas Imprint: University Press of Kansas Dimensions: Width: 13.90cm , Height: 1.50cm , Length: 22.00cm Weight: 0.321kg ISBN: 9780700617104ISBN 10: 0700617108 Pages: 160 Publication Date: 14 April 2010 Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , Tertiary & Higher Education , Professional & Vocational Format: Hardback Publisher's Status: Active Availability: In Print  This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us. Table of ContentsReviewsOshinsky tells a compelling story while putting that story in its full context. His book is both a gripping account of Furman v. Georgia and a complete survey of the American experience with the death penalty over the past half century. Stuart Banner, author of The Death Penalty: An American History A meticulously researched and elegantly written account by a masterful storyteller. Oshinsky uses this landmark case as a lens through which to view America's long history of state killing.... Filled with striking insights. Austin Sarat, author of When the State Kills: Capital Punishment and the American Condition """Oshinsky tells a compelling story while putting that story in its full context. His book is both a gripping account of Furman v. Georgia and a complete survey of the American experience with the death penalty over the past half century."" Stuart Banner, author of The Death Penalty: An American History ""A meticulously researched and elegantly written account by a masterful storyteller. Oshinsky uses this landmark case as a lens through which to view America's long history of state killing.... Filled with striking insights."" Austin Sarat, author of When the State Kills: Capital Punishment and the American Condition""" Author InformationDavid M. Oshinsky is Distinguished Teaching Professor and holder of the Jack S. Blanton Chair in History at the University of Texas and the Jacob K. Javits Visiting Professor at New York University. His other books include Worse Than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice, winner of the 1997 Robert F. Kennedy Book Prize; and A Conspiracy So Immense: The World of Joe McCarthy, winner of the D.B. Hardeman Prize. Tab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |
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