Research Catalog
Executed on a technicality : lethal injustice on America's death row
- Title
- Executed on a technicality : lethal injustice on America's death row / David R. Dow.
- Author
- Dow, David R.
- Publication
- Boston : Beacon Press, [2005], ©2005.
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| Status | Format | Access | Call Number | Item Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Text | Request in advance | KF9227.C2 D69 2005 | Off-site | |
Not available - Please for assistance. | Text | Use in library | Off-site |
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Details
- Description
- xxix, 238 pages; 23 cm
- Summary
- "When David Dow was first asked to represent death row inmates, he supported the death penalty. Capital punishment was an abstraction to him, and he imagined that death row was filled with characters like Charles Manson and Hannibal Lecter. Dow gradually realized that his perception of the death penalty and of those on death row was completely incorrect." "The cases in this eye-opening book are those of the men on death row who changed Dow's mind about capital punishment forever. You'll meet Johnny Joe Martinez, for instance, who was executed despite the fact that Dow convinced the court that he had strong grounds for an appeal. Martinez had exhausted his right of appeal when his lawyer wrote a mere seventeen-line-long appeal; he was executed on a technicality. Roger Coleman was denied an appeal because, although his lawyers mailed the appeal notice on time, it was received literally one day too late; he was executed because his lawyers failed to use registered mail." "These concrete accounts of the people Dow has known and represented prove that the death penalty is consistently unjust, and it's precisely this fundamental - and lethal- injustice, Dow convincingly argues, that should compel us to abandon the system altogether."--BOOK JACKET.
- Subject
- Bibliography (note)
- Includes bibliographical references (p. 202-228) and index.
- Contents
- Prologue : a death penalty supporter becomes a death penalty lawyer -- Introduction : beyond innocence -- Ch. 1. The execution of Carl Johnson -- Ch. 2. Cesar Fierro's coerced confession -- Ch. 3. Johnny Joe Martinez's fatal five minutes -- Ch. 4. Some are released, others are executed -- Ch. 5. Innocence is not enough -- Ch. 6. Interlude : why innocence matters -- Ch. 7. How the rule of law became mob rule -- Afterword : a personal note.
- ISBN
- 0807044202 (cloth : alk. paper)
- LCCN
- 2004025758
- OCLC
- ocm56913483
- SCSB-5180680
- Owning Institutions
- Columbia University Libraries