It is an undisputed fact that Chris Thomas was guilty of participating in a brutal double homicide. He was convicted of killing his girlfriend's parents in November of 1990, was sentenced to death in November of 1991, and was executed by the Commonwealth of Virginia in January of 2000. Chris Thomas was one of the last juvenile offenders to be put to death before the Supreme Court ruled that the execution of juveniles constituted cruel and unusual punishment. In Anatomy of an Execution, Todd C. Peppers and Laura Trevvett Anderson tell the entire story, shedding light on issues surrounding the death penalty--such as the quality of court appointed counsel, the execution of juveniles (from both a constitutional law and public policy perspective), conditions of confinement on death row, and the role of spiritual advisors in the condemned's last days. While providing insight into the legal workings of the modern death penalty system, the book also offers a rare glimpse of a young, condemned man's life before and after the crime: a childhood ravaged by loss and neglect, a toxic first love, the brutal murders, trial and sentencing, and, ultimately, a chance at redemption. This is not an effort to excuse a crime but an assertion that even a murderer's life is worth more than its worst act.
I am currently an associate professor of political science in the Department of Public Affairs at Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia as well as a visiting professor of law at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. As a researcher and author, I write about judicial institutions, legal history, and capital punishment. Specifically, my interest in the history of law clerks in the federal judiciary was triggered by serving as a law clerk to a federal district court judge in Omaha, Nebraska and a federal magistrate judge in Roanoke, Virginia; my interest in capital punishment was sparked by a chance encounter with Laura Anderson, who served as a spiritual advisor to a death row inmate named Douglas Christopher Thomas. Chris's story can be found in our book "Anatomy of an Execution: The Life and Death of Douglas Christopher Thomas," which was published in the fall of 2009 by Northeastern University Press.
If you are interested in law clerks, then you might like my earlier book "Courtiers of the Marble Palace: The Rise and Influence of the Supreme Court Law Clerk" (Stanford University Press, 2006). I continue to write about law clerks, and many of my articles can be found in the Journal of Supreme Court History. In the spring of 2012, University of Virginia Press will be published "In Chambers: Stories of Supreme Court Law Clerks and Their Justices" (Todd Peppers and Artemus Ward, Editors).
