capital punishment

The U.S. prison system is the largest and most innovative in the world. It boasts some of the most technologically advanced prisons in existence, meeting the highest standards in security. Inside these vast, specialized structures, containing thousands of inmates, highly trained corrections officers use technology to anticipate outbreaks of violence and to prevent riots and escape attempts. The tightly regulated prison system relies on many professionals. Counselors, drug rehabilitation staff, medical personnel, and kitchen workers are among the committed prison employees who daily face some of the world’s most hardened criminals. In addition to incarceration and rehabilitation, America’s prisons also serve as crime-prevention centers teaching offenders new trades and offering them the chance to learn life skills.

"In 1967, a mentally ill African American man named William Furman invaded the home of William Joseph Micke and accidentally shot him while attempting to flee. Although the evidence suggested that Micke's death was the result of an accident, the jury of the county court found Furman guilty of murder and sentenced him to death. After the Georgia Supreme Court affirmed the lower court's decision, Furman appealed to the highest court in the land ... This book discusses the details of the case as well as how the decision continues to impact the issue of capital punishment and includes excerpts from both the majority and dissenting opinions"--Back cover.

Traces the history of the death penalty in the United States and throughout the world, examines the practice of capital punishment, discusses opposition to government sanctioned executions, and looks at life on death row.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer argues that the death penalty violates the Constitution.

The author looks at the controversial topic of the death penalty and argues against it.

Explores the fundamental questions surrounding capital punishment.

Collection of prison writings, including unreleased National Public Radio commentaries, by journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal, a Pennsylvania death row inmate who contends he was unjustly convicted and sentenced to death for the 1982 murder of a Philadelphia police officer.

A collection of primary sources on crime and punishment in the U.S. from the sixteenth century to the mid-nineteenth, covering such topics as Puritan laws, Revolution-era punishments, and frontier executions.

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.