Imprisoned by the Past: Warren McCleskey and the American Death Penalty

Author:   Prof. Jeffrey L. Kirchmeier (Professor of Law, Professor of Law, CUNY School of Law, Flushing, NY)
Publisher:   Oxford University Press Inc
ISBN:  

9780199967933


Pages:   448
Publication Date:   19 February 2015
Format:   Hardback
Availability:   To order   Availability explained
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Imprisoned by the Past: Warren McCleskey and the American Death Penalty


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Overview

Imprisoned by the Past: Warren McCleskey, Race, and the American Death Penalty connects the history of the American death penalty to the case of Warren McCleskey. By highlighting the relation between American history and an individual case, Imprisoned by the Past provides a unique understanding of the big picture of capital punishment in the context of a compelling human story. McCleskey's criminal law case resulted in one of the most important Supreme Court cases in U.S. legal history, where the Court confronted evidence of racial discrimination in the administration of capital punishment. The case marks the last that the Supreme Court realistically might have held that capital punishment violates the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. As such, the constitutional law case also created a turning point in the death penalty debate in the country. The book connects McCleskey's case -- as well as his life and crime -- to the issues that have haunted the American death penalty debate since the first executions by early settlers and that still affect the legal system today.Imprisoned by the Past ties together three unique American stories in U.S history. First, the book considers the changing American death penalty across centuries where drastic changes have occurred in the last fifty years. Second, the book discusses the role that race played in that history. And third, the book tells the story of Warren McCleskey and how his life and legal case brought together the other two narratives.

Full Product Details

Author:   Prof. Jeffrey L. Kirchmeier (Professor of Law, Professor of Law, CUNY School of Law, Flushing, NY)
Publisher:   Oxford University Press Inc
Imprint:   Oxford University Press Inc
Dimensions:   Width: 23.90cm , Height: 3.30cm , Length: 16.30cm
Weight:   0.748kg
ISBN:  

9780199967933


ISBN 10:   0199967938
Pages:   448
Publication Date:   19 February 2015
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Undergraduate ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   To order   Availability explained
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.

Table of Contents

Preface to the Paperback Edition Preface Introduction Part A - Prologue Prologue: America's Marietta Part B - A Killing in Georgia Chapter 1: A Death in Dixie Chapter 2: The Trial of Warren McCleskey Chapter 3: Offie Evans and McCleskey v. Zant Part C - American Death Penalty History And the Courts Chapter 4: The First Limits: The Early American Death Penalty through the 1850s Chapter 5: Wars and Death Penalty Abolition: The Civil War Through Early 1900s Chapter 6: A Time of Change: American Society and the Death Penalty 1950s through the 1960s Chapter 7: Into the Courthouse: The 1970s Abolition Strategy Chapter 8: A New Era: A New U.S. Death Penalty Returns in the Late 1970s Chapter 9: Starting Over: Executions Resume in the 1970s and 1980s Part D - Lynching, Race, and McCleskey v. Kemp Chapter 10: Lynching and Race in America Chapter 11: Race and the Courts Chapter 12: Warren McCleskey and the Baldus Study Chapter 13: The Supreme Court and McCleskey v Kemp Part E - Execution Chapter 14: Mitigation and Reform Chapter 15: Warren McCleskey & the Electric Chair Chapter 16: Other American Execution Methods Part F - The Capital Punishment Debate Moves Outside the Courts after McCleskey Chapter 17: The Unstoppable Death Penalty After McCleskey into the early 1990s Chapter 18: New Abolitionist Voices in the 1990s Chapter 19: Innocence and the American Death Penalty Chapter 20: A Moratorium Movement Emerges in the 1990s Part G - McCleskey's Legacy in the Early Twenty-First Century Chapter 21: The Early Twenty-First Century Death Penalty in the Courts Chapter 22: The Early Twenty-First Century Death Penalty in U.S. Politics Chapter 23: Escaping from Imprisonment of the Past Part H - Epilogue Epilogue: Warren McCleskey's Case and the American Death Penalty Today

Reviews

In McCleskey v. Kemp, the Supreme Court egregiously blinked-finding that patterns of life-or-death decisions in Georgia cases could be explained on no basis other than race, yet approving Georgia's use of the death penalty nonetheless. Imprisoned by the Past for the first time exposes the complex and disturbing reasons why the Supreme Court stumbled so badly in McCleskey and how the nation has been struggling ever since to extricate itself from a flawed and historically tainted punishment. -James S. Liebman, author of The Wrong Carlos: Anatomy of a Wrongful Execution Imprisoned by the Past is an important and compelling history of the United States death penalty. By placing that history next to the story of Warren McCleskey and the role of race, Jeff Kirchmeier provides new insight into the legacy of capital punishment and the status of the death penalty today. Anyone interested in understanding the sweeping scope of death penalty history and its human story will want to read this book. -Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking and The Death of Innocents The Definitive examination of a case that might have revolutionized criminal Justice in the United States. - Evan J. Mandery, author of A Wild Justice: The Death and Resurrection of Capital Punishment in America This is an incredible book and indeed one of the most important death penalty books that has appeared on American bookshelves in recent decades. It is bound to be adopted in courses in Criminal Law and Criminology, and, in addition, will be widely read by practitioners and the wider public who are looking for a first-rate introduction to the way the death penalty works, and does not work, in modern American society. -Michael L. Radelet, co-author of In Spite of Innocence: Erroneous Convictions in Capital Cases


Author Information

Jeffrey L. Kirchmeier is a Professor of Law at City University of New York School of Law. He received his B.A. and J.D. degrees from Case Western Reserve University. Before joining the CUNY Law faculty, he was an Associate at Arnold & Porter in Washington, D.C., and he taught at Tulane School of Law and Arizona State University College of Law. For several years, he was a staff attorney at the Arizona Capital Representation Project. Prof. Kirchmeier is a member and former Chair of the Capital Punishment Committee of the New York City Bar Association, and has appeared before a New York Assembly joint committee regarding the reinstatement of the New York death penalty. He is the author of numerous law review articles on the subject of criminal procedure, constitutional law, and the death penalty.

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