Bought this book during a phase where I was reading a lot about capital punishment. My issue with the book I guess is really my mistake - this book is not "authored" by Justice Breyer in the way one would think by looking at the cover. Only 26 pages of the text is actually authored by Justice Breyer, and that 26 pages is his dissenting opinion in the case Glossip v. Gross which is freely available on Oyez or any number of other places on the internet. Let me start by saying that I am a huge fan of Justice Breyer's Glossip dissent - the opinion is well-organized, well-researched, and well-thought out, and most importantly it lays out the many practical reasons why the death penalty is simply an untenable option today.
The bulk of the text, though, is an introduction by Prof. Bessler, which does a massive disservice to Justice Breyer's opinion. Bessler's intro is dripping with political bias, which lies in stark contrast to Justice Breyer's very apolitical opinion. Much lip service is paid trashing the name of the late Justice Scalia, without any real purpose for it other than to paint a sort of "Good (Glossip dissenting judges) vs. Evil (Glossip majority judges)" narrative. While Scalia indeed liked to shelter the death penalty from any kind of scrutiny, Justice Scalia's very melodramatic, very Scalia-y comments about the death penalty are irrelevant to Justice Breyer's points. Otherwise, the history dating back pre-American Revolution is informative, and I was glad that the county-by-county death sentence map was included in the appendices. The map shows how a certain few counties (probably less than ten total in the whole country) account for an unusually high number of death sentences.
I don't necessarily really have a problem with someone expressing their political opinion in a book, but I think that the readers of this book are either A. pro-death penalty and looking for something to change their mind, or B. anti-death penalty and want some cogent, fact-based backup. I was hoping this book was Justice Breyer expanding upon his dissent in Glossip v. Gross, but sadly there "ain't nothing like the real thing" of Justice Breyer's dissenting opinion itself. Book should probably be called "Here's my two cents, followed by Justice Breyer's dissent" by Prof. John Bessler.
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