Publication date:
06 November 2014Length of book:
174 pagesPublisher
Rowman & Littlefield PublishersDimensions:
224x148mm6x9"
ISBN-13: 9781442232679
The United States is divided about the death penalty—17 states have banned it, while the remaining states have not. From wrongful convictions to botched executions, capital punishment is fraught with controversy. In The Death Penalty: What’s Keeping It Alive, award-winning criminal defense attorney Andrea Lyon turns a critical eye towards the reasons why the death penalty remains active in most states, in spite of well-documented flaws in the justice system.
The book opens with an overview of the history of the death penalty in America, then digs into the reasons capital punishment is a fixture in the justice system of most states. The author argues that religious and moral convictions play a role, as does media coverage of crime and punishment. Politics, however, plays the biggest role, according to the author, with no one wanting to look soft on crime. The death penalty remains a deadly political tool in most of the United States.
The book opens with an overview of the history of the death penalty in America, then digs into the reasons capital punishment is a fixture in the justice system of most states. The author argues that religious and moral convictions play a role, as does media coverage of crime and punishment. Politics, however, plays the biggest role, according to the author, with no one wanting to look soft on crime. The death penalty remains a deadly political tool in most of the United States.
Andrea Lyon, Dean of Valparaiso University Law School in Indiana, once again brings her prodigious experience and knowledge to one of the most vexing and polarizing issues in our society, the death penalty, posing the question in her latest book:'What’s keeping it alive?' . . .Lyon’s book includes several informative charts and appendices, as well as links to the most current data on the death penalty. . . .Lyon predicts that the death penalty’s days are numbered. Current debates about its cost and effectiveness, now occurring in most states where it hangs on, support her prediction. If it ends — or, to put it hopefully, when it ends — Andrea Lyon’s reasoned, calm, yet passionate voice will have played an integral part in its demise. This book lays another blow to it.