Grave Injustice

Grave Injustice PDF Author: Richard A. Stack
Publisher: Potomac Books, Inc.
ISBN: 1612341632
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
On September 21, 2011, the controversial execution of Georgia inmate Troy Davis, who spent twenty years on death row for a crime he most likely did not commit, revealed the complexity of death penalty trials, the flaws in America's justice system, and the rift between those who are for and against the death penalty. Davis's execution reignited a long-standing debate about whether the death penalty is an appropriate form of justice. In Grave Injustice Richard A. Stack seeks to advance the anti-death penalty argument by examining the cases of individuals who, like Davis, have been executed but a

Grave Injustice

Grave Injustice PDF Author: Richard A. Stack
Publisher: Potomac Books, Inc.
ISBN: 1612341632
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 366

Get Book

Book Description
On September 21, 2011, the controversial execution of Georgia inmate Troy Davis, who spent twenty years on death row for a crime he most likely did not commit, revealed the complexity of death penalty trials, the flaws in America's justice system, and the rift between those who are for and against the death penalty. Davis's execution reignited a long-standing debate about whether the death penalty is an appropriate form of justice. In Grave Injustice Richard A. Stack seeks to advance the anti-death penalty argument by examining the cases of individuals who, like Davis, have been executed but a

The Wrong Carlos

The Wrong Carlos PDF Author: James S. Liebman
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231167237
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
In 1989, Texas executed Carlos DeLuna, a poor Hispanic man with childlike intelligence, for the murder of Wanda Lopez, a convenience store clerk. His execution passed unnoticed for years until a team of Columbia Law School faculty and students almost accidentally chose to investigate his case and found that DeLuna almost certainly was innocent. They discovered that no one had cared enough about either the defendant or the victim to make sure the real perpetrator was found. Everything that could go wrong in a criminal case did. This book documents DeLunaÕs conviction, which was based on a single, nighttime, cross-ethnic eyewitness identification with no corroborating forensic evidence. At his trial, DeLunaÕs defense, that another man named Carlos had committed the crime, was not taken seriously. The lead prosecutor told the jury that the other Carlos, Carlos Hernandez, was a ÒphantomÓ of DeLunaÕs imagination. In upholding the death penalty on appeal, both the state and federal courts concluded the same thing: Carlos Hernandez did not exist. The evidence the Columbia team uncovered reveals that Hernandez not only existed but was well known to the police and prosecutors. He had a long history of violent crimes similar to the one for which DeLuna was executed. Families of both Carloses mistook photos of each for the other, and HernandezÕs violence continued after DeLuna was put to death. This book and its website (thewrongcarlos.net) reproduce law-enforcement, crime lab, lawyer, court, social service, media, and witness records, as well as court transcripts, photographs, radio traffic, and audio and videotaped interviews, documenting one of the most comprehensive investigations into a criminal case in U.S. history. The result is eye-opening yet may not be unusual. Faulty eyewitness testimony, shoddy legal representation, and prosecutorial misfeasance continue to put innocent people at risk of execution. The principal investigators conclude with novel suggestions for improving accuracy among the police, prosecutors, forensic scientists, and judges.

The Death of Innocents

The Death of Innocents PDF Author: Helen Prejean
Publisher: Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd
ISBN: 9781853116827
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
Sr Helen Prejean has accompanied five men to execution since she began her work in 1982. She believes the last two, Dobie Williams in Louisiana and Joseph O'Dell in Virginia, were innocent, but their juries were blocked from seeing all the evidence and their defence teams were incompetent. 'The readers of this book will be the first "jury" with access to all the evidence the trail juries never saw', she says. The Death of Innocents shows how race, prosecutorial ambition, poverty and publicity determine who dies and who lives. Prejean raises profound constitutional questions about the legality of the death penalty.

Wrongful Executions

Wrongful Executions PDF Author: Syed Waqas Ali
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781520929699
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 55

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Book Description
The death penalty is a heated topic. The execution of a human being that is convicted of a crime can seem mind-blowing. For some, it may seem necessary. Although the opinions on death row differ, there is one fact that does neither the against- or pro-death penalty supporters doubt. Wrongly convicted men continue to be executed. Innocent people go on death row. Falsely accused human beings face the capital punishment. This is not a book about why the death penalty is wrong. This book goes through ten gruesome and heartbreaking cases of innocent people that were convicted and sentenced to death. These victims are only a few amongst many more recognized cases, and many more unrecognized ones. Although no one knows how many innocent people have been executed through the years, on may wonder, upon reading these pages, how many do we really need?

Arbitrary Death

Arbitrary Death PDF Author: Rick Unklesbay
Publisher: Wheatmark, Inc.
ISBN: 1627876812
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 175

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Book Description
Over a career spanning nearly four decades, Rick Unklesbay has tried over one hundred murder cases before juries that ended with sixteen men and women receiving the death sentence. Arbitrary Death depicts some of the most horrific murders in Tucson, Arizona, the author's prosecution of those cases, and how the death penalty was applied. It provides the framework to answer the questions: Why is America the only Western country to still use the death penalty? Can a human-run system treat those cases fairly and avoid unconstitutional arbitrariness? It is an insider's view from someone who has spent decades prosecuting murder cases and who now argues that the death penalty doesn't work and our system is fundamentally flawed. With a rational, balanced approach, Unklesbay depicts cases that represent how different parts of the criminal justice system are responsible for the arbitrary nature of the death penalty and work against the fair application of the law. The prosecution, trial courts, juries, and appellate courts all play a part in what ultimately is a roll of the dice as to whether a defendant lives or dies. Arbitrary Death is for anyone who wonders why and when its government seeks to legally take the life of one of its citizens. It will have you questioning whether you can support a system that applies death as an arbitrary punishment -- and often decades after the sentence was given.

When Justice Fails

When Justice Fails PDF Author: Robert J. Norris
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781611638561
Category : Criminal justice, Administration of
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Wrongful convictions have become a prominent concern in state and federal systems of justice. As thousands of innocent prisoners have been freed in the United States in the past few decades, social science researchers and legal actors have produced a wealth of new insights about how and why mistakes occur and what can be done to help prevent further injustices. When Justice Fails surveys the field of innocence scholarship to offer an overview of the key research, legal, and policy issues associated with wrongful convictions. Topics include the leading sources of error, the detection and correction of miscarriages of justice, the aftermath of wrongful convictions, and more. The volume includes references to historic and contemporary instances of miscarriages of justice and presents information gleaned from media sources about the cases and related policy issues. The book is ideally suited for use in undergraduate classes which focus on wrongful convictions and the administration of justice. PowerPoint slides are available to professors upon adoption of this book. You can download a sample of the full 139-slide presentation here. If you have adopted the book for a course, contact [email protected] to request the PowerPoint slides. "The learning objectives presented in the beginning of each chapter are accomplished through a variety of ways. Importantly, regardless of a student's background, discussions are presented from so many different angles that the material is tailored to all readers. Each chapter starts with a case study, introduces new concepts, discusses the related law, and concludes with presenting policy reforms. The authors not only present the issues related to wrongful convictions but the potential solutions as well." -- Matthew R. Hassett, UNC-Pembroke "I will continue to frequently open this book and read it to make myself a better police officer and to pass on knowledge to do my part in preventing wrongful convictions." -- Earthen McEachen, Senior Capstone student at Curry College in Boston

Anatomy of Injustice

Anatomy of Injustice PDF Author: Raymond Bonner
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307948544
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
From Pulitzer Prize winner Raymond Bonner, the gripping story of a grievously mishandled murder case that put a twenty-three-year-old man on death row. In January 1982, an elderly white widow was found brutally murdered in the small town of Greenwood, South Carolina. Police immediately arrested Edward Lee Elmore, a semiliterate, mentally retarded black man with no previous felony record. His only connection to the victim was having cleaned her gutters and windows, but barely ninety days after the victim's body was found, he was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. Elmore had been on death row for eleven years when a young attorney named Diana Holt first learned of his case. With the exemplary moral commitment and tenacious investigation that have distinguished his reporting career, Bonner follows Holt's battle to save Elmore's life and shows us how his case is a textbook example of what can go wrong in the American justice system. Moving, enraging, suspenseful, and enlightening, Anatomy of Injustice is a vital contribution to our nation's ongoing, increasingly important debate about inequality and the death penalty.

When Truth Is All You Have

When Truth Is All You Have PDF Author: Jim McCloskey
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0525566821
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
“A riveting and infuriating examination of criminal prosecutions, revealing how easy it is to convict the wrong person and how nearly impossible it is to undo the error.” —Washington Post "No one has illuminated this problem more thoughtfully and persistently." —Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy Jim McCloskey was at a midlife crossroads when he met the man who would change his life. A former management consultant, McCloskey had grown disenchanted with the business world; he enrolled at Princeton Theological Seminary at the age of 37. His first assignment, in 1980, was as a chaplain at Trenton State Prison. Among the inmates was Jorge de los Santos, a heroin addict who'd been convicted of murder years earlier. He swore to McCloskey that he was innocent—and, over time, McCloskey came to believe him. With no legal or investigative training to speak of, McCloskey threw himself into the case. Two years later, thanks to those efforts, Jorge de los Santos walked free, fully exonerated. McCloskey had found his calling. He established Centurion Ministries, the first group in America devoted to overturning wrongful convictions. Together with his staff and a team of forensic experts, lawyers, and volunteers—through tireless investigation and an unflagging dedication to justice—Centurion has freed 65 innocent prisoners who had been sentenced to life or death. When Truth Is All You Have is McCloskey's inspirational story, as well as those of the unjustly imprisoned for whom he has fought. Spanning the nation, it is a chronicle of faith and doubt; of triumphant success and shattering failure. It candidly exposes a life of searching and struggle, uplifted by McCloskey's certainty that he had found what he was put on earth to do. Filled with generosity, humor, and compassion, it is the soul-bearing account of a man who has redeemed innumerable lives—and incited a movement—with nothing more than his unshakeable belief in the truth.

Deadly Justice

Deadly Justice PDF Author: Frank R. Baumgartner
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190841540
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
In 1976, the US Supreme Court ruled in Gregg v. Georgia that the death penalty was constitutional if it complied with certain specific provisions designed to ensure that it was reserved for the 'worst of the worst.' The same court had rejected the death penalty just four years before in the Furman decision because it found that the penalty had been applied in a capricious and arbitrary manner. The 1976 decision ushered in the 'modern' period of the US death penalty, setting the country on a course to execute over 1,400 inmates in the ensuing years, with over 8,000 individuals currently sentenced to die. Now, forty years after the decision, the eminent political scientist Frank Baumgartner along with a team of younger scholars (Marty Davidson, Kaneesha Johnson, Arvind Krishnamurthy, and Colin Wilson) have collaborated to assess the empirical record and provide a definitive account of how the death penalty has been implemented. Each chapter addresses a precise empirical question and provides evidence, not opinion, about whether how the modern death penalty has functioned. They decided to write the book after Justice Breyer issued a dissent in a 2015 death penalty case in which he asked for a full briefing on the constitutionality of the death penalty. In particular, they assess the extent to which the modern death penalty has met the aspirations of Gregg or continues to suffer from the flaws that caused its rejection in Furman. To answer this question, they provide the most comprehensive statistical account yet of the workings of the capital punishment system. Authoritative and pithy, the book is intended for both students in a wide variety of fields, researchers studying the topic, and--not least--the Supreme Court itself.

A Descending Spiral

A Descending Spiral PDF Author: Marc Bookman
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 1620976595
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
Powerful, wry essays offering modern takes on a primitive practice, from one of our most widely read death penalty abolitionists As Ruth Bader Ginsburg has noted, people who are well represented at trial rarely get the death penalty. But as Marc Bookman shows in a dozen brilliant essays, the problems with capital punishment run far deeper than just bad representation. Exploring prosecutorial misconduct, racist judges and jurors, drunken lawyering, and executing the innocent and the mentally ill, these essays demonstrate that precious few people on trial for their lives get the fair trial the Constitution demands. Today, death penalty cases continue to capture the hearts, minds, and eblasts of progressives of all stripes—including the rich and famous (see Kim Kardashian’s advocacy)—but few people with firsthand knowledge of America’s “injustice system” have the literary chops to bring death penalty stories to life. Enter Marc Bookman. With a voice that is both literary and journalistic, the veteran capital defense lawyer and seven-time Best American Essays “notable” author exposes the dark absurdities and fatal inanities that undermine the logic of the death penalty wherever it still exists. In essays that cover seemingly “ordinary” capital cases over the last thirty years, Bookman shows how violent crime brings out our worst human instincts—revenge, fear, retribution, and prejudice. Combining these emotions with the criminal legal system’s weaknesses—purposely ineffective, arbitrary, or widely infected with racism and misogyny—is a recipe for injustice. Bookman has been charming and educating readers in the pages of The Atlantic, Mother Jones, and Slate for years. His wit and wisdom are now collected and preserved in A Descending Spiral.