The Road to Abolition?

At the start of the twenty-first century, America is in the midst of a profound national reconsideration of the death penalty. There has been a dramatic decline in the number of people being sentenced to death as well as executed, exonerations have become common, and the number of states abolishing the death penalty is on the rise. The essays featured in "The Road to Abolition?" track this shift in attitudes toward capital punishment, and consider whether or not the death penalty will ever be abolished in America. The interdisciplinary group of experts gathered by Charles J. Ogletree Jr., and Austin Sarat ask and attempt to answer the hard questions that need to be addressed if the death penalty is to be abolished. Will the death penalty end only to be replaced with life in prison without parole? Will life without the possibility of parole become, in essence, the new death penalty? For abolitionists, might that be a pyrrhic victory? The contributors discuss how the death penalty might be abolished, with particular emphasis on the current debate over lethal injection as a case study on why and how the elimination of certain forms of execution might provide a model for the larger abolition of the death penalty.

ISBN 0814762182   Pages 368 ISBN13 9780814762189 (What's this?)   Volumes 1 Publisher New York University Press   Weight (grammes) 431 Imprint New York University Press   Published in New York Format Paperback   Series title Charles Hamilton Houston Institute Series on Race & Justice Publication date 21 Dec 2009   Height (mm) 228 Library of Congress 2009020633   Width (mm) 166 DEWEY 364.660973   Spine width (mm) 23 DEWEY edition DC22   Academic level Professional / Scholarly

Introduction		Toward and Beyond the Abolition of Capital Punishment by Charles J. Ogletree, Jr. and Austin Sarat		1
Pt. 1		Assessing the Prospects for Abolition
1		The Executioner's Waning Defenses by Michael L. Radelet		19
2		Blinded by Science on the Road to Abolition? by Simon A. Cole and Jay D. Aronson		46
3		Abolition in the United States by 2050: On Political Capital and Ordinary Acts of Resistance by Bernard E. Harcourt		72
4		The Beginning of the End? by Carol S. Steiker and Jordan M. Steiker		97
5		Rocked but Still Rolling: The Enduring Institution of Capital Punishment in Historical and Comparative Perspective by Michael McCann and David T. Johnson		139
Pt. II		Debating Lethal Injection
6		For Execution Methods Challenges, the Road to Abolition Is Paved with Paradox by Deborah W. Denno		183
7		Perfect Execution: Abolitionism and the Paradox of Lethal Injection by Timothy V. Kaufman-Osborn		215
8		"No Improvement over Electrocution or Even a Bullet": Lethal Injection and the Meaning of Speed and Reliability in the Modern Execution Process by Jurgen Martschukat		252
Pt. III		Putting the Death Penalty in Context
9		Torture, War, and Capital Punishment: Linkages and Missed Connections by Robin Wagner-Pacifici		281
10		Making Difference: Modernity and the Political Formations of Death by Peter Fitzpatrick		319
		About the Contributors		349
		Index		353

"These essays will be essential reading for any person who wants to be informed about both the present and the future of the institution of capital punishment." Daniel J. Givelber, Northeastern University School of Law

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