Executed On A Technicality: Lethal Injustice On America's Death Row - Hardcover

Dow, David R.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0807044202 ISBN 13: 9780807044209

Publisher: Beacon Pr, 2005

Synopsis

A Texas lawyer who once supported the death penalty shares his change of heart on the subject, presenting stories of real-life death row inmates who were abused by the justice system, coerced into confessing crimes, represented by incompetent lawyers, and subjected to backward judges. 15,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author

David R. Dow is professor of law at the University of Houston Law Center and an internationally recognized figure in the fight against the death penalty. He is the founder and director of the Texas Innocence Network and has represented more than thirty death row inmates. Regularly quoted in publications like the New York Times and the Washington Post, Dow is coeditor of Machinery of Death: The Reality of America's Death Penalty Regime. He lives in Houston, Texas.

Reviews

This volume joins a growing list of recent books arguing against the death penalty, particularly by people who once supported it. Dow, a professor at the University of Houston Law Center and founder of the Texas Innocence Network, used to be "somewhere between agnostic and mildly in favor of capital punishment." Then, in 1988, he took on the case of Carl Johnson-and began to change his mind. Johnson's lawyer literally slept through crucial parts of the trial, and the judge, in Dow's opinion, gave an incorrect answer to a question from the jury that might have compelled them to sentence Johnson to death. The arguments Dow presents are pragmatic, based not on abstract theories but on facts: only a handful of murderers are executed, he says, and they are "almost never the worst of the worst"-not the Hannibal Lecters, not the Charles Mansons. Rather, they are poor members of minority groups who have been represented by incompetent lawyers, manipulated into forced confessions, or have, in some cases, even been innocent. All of these points will be familiar to opponents of capital punishment, but readers who are on the fence may learn much from Dow's impassioned but well-reasoned case.
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Formerly a supporter of the death penalty, attorney Dow examines the inherent unfairness of the process of imposing the death penalty. Currently, sentencing focuses too much on guilt rather than fairness, Dow asserts. He focuses on a number of cases involving horrible crimes, in which the determination of the death penalty depended less on the crime and guilt than on a culmination of other factors, including official corruption and inept defense attorneys and judges. In effect, contrary to public notions that the penalty fit a particular crime, the death penalty is as random as a lightning strike. Dow provides historical perspective on the death penalty--outlawed in 1972 because of its arbitrary use, and its reinstatement with an extensive appeal process meant to address concerns about constitutionality. But a 1996 law effectively undercut the appeal process, sacrificing fairness as the application of the death penalty appeared less a response to horrendous crimes and more a measure of the accused's race, class, and inability to secure a fair trial. Vernon Ford
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Beacon Pr
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0807044202
• ISBN 13: 9780807044209
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 3
• Number of pages: 238