NCJ Number
147018
Date Published
1994
Length
287 pages
Annotation
This book is the single most comprehensive examination of capital punishment in any one State.
Abstract
The authors, after analyzing data concerning legal executions from 1819 to 1990, show 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. They also track long-term changes in public opinion. The book is divided into eight chapters: (1) From Lynchings to Electrocutions; (2) The Initial "Harvest of Death": 1924-1972; (3) Rape, Race, and a "Peculiar Chivalry"; (4) Capital Murder and Midnight Appeals; (5) Spared the Chair and Sentenced to Life; (6) Adoption of Lethal Injection and Contemporary Death Rituals; (7) Stages of Sentencing and Future Dangerousness of Convicts; (8) Some Closing Thoughts. There are three appendixes: (1) Statute Providing for the Electrocution of Convicts Condemned to Death; (2) Death Row Prisoners, 1923-1988; (3) Post-1974 Department of Corrections Procedures for the Execution of Death-sentenced Inmates. Footnotes, references, court cases, index