Customer Reviews

The Contradictions of American Capital Punishment

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I use this in class (along w/ Banner) and it really hits home. While his arguments are controversial, they are grounded in data.

"Zimring does us a great public service in examining the United States' retention of a primitive and brutal punishment long after it was abandoned by other developed nations. This book will help insure that the inevitable abandonment of capital punishment by the United States is not delayed for another generation."

Stephen Bright
Director, Southern Center for Human Rights

"Frank Zimring's book will revolutionize how we understand the death penalty in the United States. Why, Zimring asks, does capital punishment persist in America, almost uniquely among established democracies, despite entrenched unfairness and the virtual inevitability of error? His original and provocative answer is America's vigilante tradition. Like vigilante action, the death penalty suffers from the biases of the dominant social group and the unwarranted assumption that the guilty have been correctly identified. Highlighting this uncomfortable comparison offers a promising new approach for those committed to ending this inhumane institution of American life."

Kenneth Roth, Executive Director, Human Rights Watch

"Frank Zimring's new book makes a major contribution to understanding the present situation of the death penalty in the United States and to predicting what lies ahead. Central to his analysis is his judgment that a "fundamental value conflict" lies at the root of the struggle: Will America's frontier "vigilante values" that support our death penalty practices survive their collision with our attachment to "due process" values? Written in his characteristically lively style, this provocative and completely original work has much to teach both defenders and opponents of capital punishment."

Hugo Adam Bedau, author of The Death Penalty in America