Death Nation: The Experts Explain American Capital Punishment

Based on empirical evidence, Death Nation offers a fair and reasoned analysis of capital punishment as it is actually practiced in the United States. It includes a discussion of death penalty history, an analysis of the death penalty law and a discussion of various policy implications. Rather than present philosophical or moral arguments, it presents findings from a survey administered to dozens of capital punishment experts throughout the United States. Included in the book are fact check sections that analyze these expert opinions for accuracy based on available empirical evidence.  Examines important questions such as: Do executions reduce murder?; Is capital punishment biased against any race, gender, or class of people?; Is the death penalty used against the innocent?; Is the application of the death penalty plagued by significant problem?; Why is the United States the only western industrialized nation to continue to carry out executions? Uses empirical evidencerather than philosophical or moral arguments, to analyze the realities of the death penalty as it is actually practiced in the United States.  Captures and presents the opinions of capital punishment experts with regard to the effectiveness of the death penalty in America, as well as its alleged problems.  Anyone interested in capital punishment within the United States and those involved with death penalty policies and states that maintain capital punishment.

Matthew Robinson is Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at Appalachian State University.  His main areas of interest include criminological theory, crime prevention, the death penalty, the war on drugs, and injustices of the criminal justice system.  He is author of Justice Blind? Ideals and Realities of American Criminal Justice (Prentice Hall, 2005) and Why Crime? An Integrated Systems Theory of Antisocial Behavior (Prentice Hall, 2004).  He is also Past President of the Southern Criminal Justice Association.