Executed on a Technicality: Lethal Injustice on America's Death Row (Paperback)

by David R. Dow (Author) "Eight minutes after the state of Texas began to inject poison into his veins, Carl Johnson died.1..." (more)
Key Phrases: state habeas proceedings, habeas lawyer, habeas counsel, Supreme Court, Fifth Circuit, United States (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
This volume joins a growing list of recent books arguing against the death penalty, particularly by people who once supported it. Dow, a professor at the University of Houston Law Center and founder of the Texas Innocence Network, used to be "somewhere between agnostic and mildly in favor of capital punishment." Then, in 1988, he took on the case of Carl Johnson-and began to change his mind. Johnson's lawyer literally slept through crucial parts of the trial, and the judge, in Dow's opinion, gave an incorrect answer to a question from the jury that might have compelled them to sentence Johnson to death. The arguments Dow presents are pragmatic, based not on abstract theories but on facts: only a handful of murderers are executed, he says, and they are "almost never the worst of the worst"-not the Hannibal Lecters, not the Charles Mansons. Rather, they are poor members of minority groups who have been represented by incompetent lawyers, manipulated into forced confessions, or have, in some cases, even been innocent. All of these points will be familiar to opponents of capital punishment, but readers who are on the fence may learn much from Dow's impassioned but well-reasoned case.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist
Formerly a supporter of the death penalty, attorney Dow examines the inherent unfairness of the process of imposing the death penalty. Currently, sentencing focuses too much on guilt rather than fairness, Dow asserts. He focuses on a number of cases involving horrible crimes, in which the determination of the death penalty depended less on the crime and guilt than on a culmination of other factors, including official corruption and inept defense attorneys and judges. In effect, contrary to public notions that the penalty fit a particular crime, the death penalty is as random as a lightning strike. Dow provides historical perspective on the death penalty--outlawed in 1972 because of its arbitrary use, and its reinstatement with an extensive appeal process meant to address concerns about constitutionality. But a 1996 law effectively undercut the appeal process, sacrificing fairness as the application of the death penalty appeared less a response to horrendous crimes and more a measure of the accused's race, class, and inability to secure a fair trial. Vernon Ford
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 238 pages
• Publisher: Beacon Press (May 15, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807044199
• ISBN-13: 978-0807044193
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #938,163 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Highly Readable, Compelling Work, May 27, 2005

By	Kathryn M. Kase (Houston, TX) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Executed on a Technicality: Lethal Injustice on America's Death Row (Hardcover)

There are no punches pulled here. David Dow doesn't shy away from describing his representation of the truly guilty or their crimes. But what will take your breath away are his descriptions of the brutally honest conversations that post-conviction counsel must have with their death row clients. It's not about asking "Did you do it" but advising the condemned that no matter how good the case or the lawyer, the death sentence probably will be carried out. Perhaps only oncologists for Stage 4 cancer patients know how it feels to be so brutally honest.

Books on legal topics have a deserved reputation for being dense, dry, and mired in technical language. Dow avoids these traps with clear, compelling writing and delivers a work that is accessible to lay people and lawyers alike.

For lawyers, the book is attractive for its well-argued and well-supported themes. The footnotes are worth the price of entry alone.

For the lay reader, Dow develops his themes by focusing on the cases of some of the many death row inmates he has represented over the years. Along the way, he describes his personal journey from death penalty supporter to abolitionist.

This is a worthwhile work for anyone concerned about our criminal justice system and the myriad ways in which the "machinery of justice" and the "machinery of death" do not mesh.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A thoughtful, unsparing look at the death penalty in action, May 12, 2005

By	Andrew Hammel (Düsseldorf, Germany) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Executed on a Technicality: Lethal Injustice on America's Death Row (Hardcover)

The author, David Dow, is a law professor at the University of Houston who has practiced as a lawyer representing death row inmates in Texas for over fifteen years. His book is unusual for several reasons. First, Dow is writing as an insider - an experienced death row attorney. Second, the book is not intended to elicit `amens' from like-minded activists: Dow once supported the death penalty himself, does not dismiss that view out of hand, does not indulge the sentimental fantasy that most death row inmates are innocent, and does not downplay the seriousness of the crimes the guilty ones have committed. Finally, Dow is one of those rare lawyers who can actually write. His prose is clear and unsentimental, but also colorful and peppered with strong judgments backed by proof.

Using careful argumentation, Dow makes three main points. First, questions of innocence, while important, should not drive the debate on the death penalty. To Dow, the condemnation of innocent people, or people who are guilty but did not receive fair trials, is merely a symptom of a disease. That disease - a set of systemic problems with the capital punishment system - should be the real focus of study and reform. Second, the "endless appeals" that most people think ensure careful review often do nothing of the sort. Dow chronicles case after case in which courts and lawyers argue over the Byzantine technical rules to the defendant's appeal, only to have the courts eventually decide that they are legally barred from even hearing evidence as to whether the inmate's trial was fair.

Finally, Dow argues that legions of judges, under the intense political and emotional pressure of death penalty cases, have given up on the rule of law. You may rub your eyes in disbelief at the federal appeals court which denied an appeal before it had even been filed, or the state court who kept a defense lawyer on the case even after he took a job with the district attorney, but these episodes really happened, and are only two of many Dow documents. Dow calls these incidents acts of judicial lawlessness, and concludes: "Murder is undoubtedly among the ugliest of crimes, but it is beyond ironic when our response to horrific crimes is to embrace the lawless tactics of the vigilante."

The most gripping parts of the book, however, are surely the vivid stories of the many inmates and other people Dow met in his years of work, and his harrowing and emotional visits with inmates on death row. Stories like that of Cesar Fierro, driven insane by the 26 years he has spent on death row in procedural limbo, even though the state's evidence against him fell apart long ago and prosecutor who sent him to death row now admits there's no longer a case against him. Or of Johnny Joe Martinez, whose tearful and intense four-hour meeting with the woman whose son he murdered led her to write the parole board urging them to commute Martinez's sentence to life in prison. (He was executed after losing by a vote of 9-8). These wrenching, sometimes even oddly amusing stories leaven the necessary legal discussions, and shine a merciless spotlight on the human cost of executions to all those involved - not just the offender.

"Executed on a Technicality" sheds light on a part of the criminal justice system off-limits to all but a few, and offers a genuinely new approach to a topic one might have thought had been explored from every possible angle.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Sad but Compelling Book, June 6, 2005

By	John Matlock "Gunny" (Winnemucca, NV) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Executed on a Technicality: Lethal Injustice on America's Death Row (Hardcover)

A woman recently died in our state prison. She had killed a half dozen people before she was caught and sentenced to life. She went to jail a dozen or more years ago. At the time there was a lot of comment that she should have gotten the death penalty. In fact, even after her death there were peole who said that she should have been put to death. I asked some of them why. She was locked up, she didn't hurt any more people, society was just as safe as if she had been killed, but we didn't kill her. They didn't have a good answer beyond "we just should have."

The United States is right up there with all the other progressive countries that allow the death penalty: North Korea, Iran, Iraq, China, Vietnam, most of Africa and the middle East. Notably missing from this list include England, Germany, France, Finland, most of the civilized countries.

I don't know why, but I guess that I had hoped that with an issue so important that our Government, our legal system would be very careful and lean over backwards to execute only the worst of the worst. Why do we allow people to be executed because a piece of paper was filed a day late? Why do we execute people when there is any chance at all that they might not be guilty? Why do ask the state to make our society a little more violent than it already is.

This is a sad book that makes compelling reading.