A new book of interest to CADP readers...
WHO OWNS DEATH? Capital Punishment, The American Conscience and the End of Executions
By Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell
"If we are bent on imposing death as a penalty, must
we not fully understand what we are doing? If we are satisfied
to kill, must we not fully comprehend what we are about?
WHO OWNS DEATH? is an elegant revelation of the underside
of death as punishment. It is our duty to be informed.
This book informs."
-- Gerry Spence, attorney, and author of "Give Me
Liberty!"
"Bravo! WHO OWNS DEATH? makes plain that America
has supported the death penalty only as an angry and confused
response to a sickeningly violent society, and now is having
second -- and better -- thoughts."
In WHO OWNS DEATH? Capital Punishment, The American Conscience and the End of Executions (William Morrow, November 2000, $25.00), a distinguished scholar and an accomplished journalist, authors of the acclaimed "Hiroshima in America," have written the first book to explore from a psychological and social perspective the extraordinary debate currently swirling around the death penalty in America.
While the execution rate has soared in the past decade, opposition to state killing has intensified dramatically. In this remarkable book, Lifton and Mitchell have drawn two surprising conclusions that challenge conventional thinking: most Americans, they argue, do not strongly support executions; and the days of the death penalty in America are now numbered.
Robert Jay Lifton, a famed psychiatrist who has written much about death, violence and the psychology of survivors, and Greg Mitchell, an expert on the death penalty as represented in the media and popular culture, are opponents of capital punishment, but they knew at the start of this project that prevailing wisdom held that America is fiercely in favor of capital punishment. In WHO OWNS DEATH? they set out to learn why. The result is a book which "lifts the whole discussion of the death penalty in America to a new level," according to Hugo Adam Bedau, America's leading authority on capital punishment.
Lifton and Mitchell talked with academics and activists, prosecutors and defense attorneys, religious figures and prison officials, and the families of murder victims, always emphasizing questions of attitude and motivation. The results of this research are fascinating and unexpected. It turns out that Americans are clearly confused about how capital punishment works and should work, and most are profoundly uneasy about seeing it carried out. Although few raise their voices loudly in protest, not many are comfortable with the notion of the state as killer, and this number rises every time an inmate is released from death row when new evidence establishes his innocence.
Highly provocative, filled with dramatic details of actual cases, this is a clear-eyed and intimate account of the death penalty process. The authors let us hear the voices of those intimately involved: judges and jurors, wardens and guards, witnesses to executions and the executioners themselves.
They explore, with empathy, the deeper emotions, moral views and, in some cases, the political calculations behind public attitudes, and official behavior. And they address the critical issue of how capital punishment reverberates throughout our society, deeply affecting our struggles with other forms of death and violence, and what this suggests about the future of our society.
In the end, they illustrate why the death penalty must -- and will -- be abolished in America in the near future. WHO OWNS DEATH? is a book destined to become what Hugo Bedau calls a "landmark" in the history of the death penalty in our country.
"Lifton and Mitchell take a penetrating look at the
clashing impulses underlying America's passionate embrace
of the death penalty and an the psychic warping that lets
us 'do it' without facing what it is we do. Indispensable
reading for all who want to understand the systems of personal
and political apologetics necessary to maintain the machinery
of death -- and what may bring the machine to a stop in
the end."
-- Anthony G. Amsterdam, New York University
"In this comprehensive, fact-finding analysis Lifton
and Mitchell challenge conventional thinking. This book
is an absolute 'must' read for those who are open-minded
and desirous to learn the issues surrounding capital punishment
and the growing call to end executions in our country."
-- Walter F. Sullivan, Bishop of Richmond
Order book now
