The Rope, The Chair, and the Needle: Capital Punishment in Texas, 1923-1990 [Paperback]

James W. Marquart (Author), Sheldon Ekland-Olson (Author), Jonathan R. Sorensen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 1998 | ISBN-10: 029275213X | ISBN-13: 978-0292752139

In late summer 1923, legal hangings in Texas came to an end, and the electric chair replaced the gallows. Of 520 convicted capital offenders sentenced to die between 1923 and 1972, 361 were actually executed, thus maintaining Texas' traditional reputation as a staunch supporter of capital punishment. This book is the single most comprehensive examination to date of capital punishment in any one state, drawing on data for legal executions from 1819 to 1990. The authors show persuasively how slavery and the racially biased practice of lynching in Texas led to the institutionalization and public approval of executions skewed according to race, class, and gender, and they also track long-term changes in public opinion up to the present. The stories of the condemned are masterfully interwoven with fact and interpretation to provide compelling reading for scholars of law, criminal justice, race relations, history, and sociology, as well as partisans on both sides of the debate.

Editorial Reviews

Review

A solid contribution to our understanding of the relationship between race, crime, and capital punishment in American history. (Law and History Review )

An important new book . . . the first to explore in such depth the historical continuities in capital punishment in a single state, and especially the complex part played by racism in both past and present application of the death penalty. It is must-reading for anyone who seeks to understand capital punishment in the United States. (Criminal Justice Review )

Product Details

• Paperback: 295 pages
• Publisher: University of Texas Press (1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 029275213X
• ISBN-13: 978-0292752139
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,207,805 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars THE ROPE, THE CHAIR & THE NEEDLE, July 16, 2000

By 

Gabriela D. Enderli - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Rope, The Chair, and the Needle: Capital Punishment in Texas, 1923-1990 (Paperback)

A very concise research on the direct development of capital punishment from legal and illegal lynchings to today's practice of executions in the South of the United States with focus on Texas. The authors show that the victims of this system have always been people of mediocre education with little or no financial means at all. In addition to that they show how the system of exclusion works: "The source of this southern concentration of both illegal lynchings and state-sanctioned executions is rooted in a cultural readiness to engage in what we would call a logic of exclusion."

The dominant group of people caught in this system were African-Americans, Mexican-Americans, Asians, Native Americans, and southern European ethnic minorities,as well as poor Whites, thus representing a group of "excluded" people from the rest of society.

The study has been done with accuracy and a lot of background knowledge, giving the reader an insight not only into today's legal system and its history in the United States, but also into social conditions and attitudes observed in the period between 1819 and 1990. A very valuable book for everybody interested in knowing about roots and development of Capital Punishment in Texas and the USA. An extensive bibliography at the end of the book gives the reader a possibility to make further studies on the subject.