A descending spiral Exposing the death penalty in 12 essays

Marc Bookman

Book - 2021

"Powerful, wry essays offering modern takes on a primitive practice, from one of our most widely read death penalty abolitionists"--

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Subjects
Genres
Essays
Published
New York : The New Press [2021]
Language
English
Main Author
Marc Bookman (author)
Physical Description
222 pages ; 23 cm
ISBN
9781620976548
  • 1. Executed Against the Judgment of Twelve Jurors
  • 2. How Crazy Is Too Crazy to Be Executed?
  • 3. Racist and Proud (and a Judge)
  • 4. Sex-Shamed to Death
  • 5. The Lawyer Who Drank His Client to Death
  • 6. When a Kid Kills His Longtime Abuser, Who's the Victim'?
  • 7. The Confessions of Innocent Men
  • 8. A Descending Spiral
  • 9. Trials and Errors
  • 10. Stranger in a Strange Land
  • 11. The N-Word in the jury Box
  • 12. Smoke
  • Afterword
  • Acknowledgments
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Attorney Bookman, director of the Atlantic Center for Capital Representation, debuts with an incisive and well-documented critique of the death penalty. Spotlighting 12 separate cases, Bookman details prosecutorial misconduct, judicial capriciousness, racial bias, and incompetent defense lawyering. He begins with the case of Beauford White, a Florida man executed for taking part in a 1977 robbery in which six people were killed. Based on testimony that White was shocked by the murders and tried to stop them, the jury unanimously voted for life imprisonment, but the judge overruled their recommendation and sentenced White to death. (Florida has since abolished judicial override in capital cases.) Detailing the case of Andre Thomas, a Black man from Texas who believed God told him to murder his estranged wife, her infant daughter, and his four-year-old son in 2004, and gouged both of his eyes out while in custody, Bookman delves into the legacy of lynching in America and discusses how the justice system is weighted against the mentally ill. With lucid prose and a firm grasp of history and legal precedent, Bookman makes a persuasive argument that these dozen cases are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to death penalty injustices. This is a cogent and harrowing primer on what's wrong with capital punishment. (May)

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Review by Library Journal Review

Attorney Bookman (director, Atlantic Ctr. for Capital Representation) makes a convincing case for ending capital punishment in this collection of 12 essays. Though 10 of the pieces were previously published in magazines such as the Atlantic and Mother Jones, they will be new to many readers. The book's title comes from Martin Luther King Jr.'s statement that violence is a "descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy." Bookman argues that capital punishment in the U.S. is an arbitrary act of state-sanctioned violence dependent on factors such as the lawyer a defendant can afford; the state where a case is brought; the defendant's race, gender, and/or mental health; and even whether a trial disrupts the judge's vacation. The book's thematic flow would have been improved by tighter editing to weave all 12 essays into an overarching narrative and remove repetition. Nevertheless, this is an absorbing, stirring work. VERDICT Readers interested in the death penalty and injustice in the U.S. criminal justice system, as well as those who enjoyed Bryan Stevenson's Just Mercy, will appreciate this title.--Jessica Hilburn, Benson Memorial Lib., Titusville, PA

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

Essays from one of America's most prominent death penalty abolitionists. In authoritative and scholarly yet largely accessible language, Bookman--director of the Atlantic Center for Capital Representation and veteran capital defense attorney who has contributed to Mother Jones, the Atlantic, and other publications as well as numerous editions of the Best American Essays series--evaluates a dozen cases that expose glaring injustices endemic to the system. Mental illness and its (mis)diagnosis is clearly one of the problem areas, as demonstrated by the chilling case of Andre Thomas, who, inspired by a demonic delusion, murdered his family in a psychotic rage in 2004. The author argues against the death penalty in cases where a severe "intellectual disability" is readily present and medically verified, and he points out that because each state's laws vary, so do the fates of their felons. Bookman delineates situations where capital punishment is not only unjust, but upheld through an overlooked breach of process and based on convoluted evidence, an unstable criminal, or racially tainted conclusions. The author spotlights cases plagued by prosecutorial misconduct, judicial override, and racially biased judges and jurors, and he details situations in which the convicted party received the death penalty through the improprieties of skewed perspectives. He also probes the history of--and general hesitancy about--the execution of women and shows the danger of impaired representation. "In the same way that alcoholics see things more clearly when they stop drinking," he writes, "death penalty cases often come into better focus when good lawyers take over from bad ones." As a staunch death penalty abolitionist, Bookman creates a clear, comprehensive portrait of a broken system, and the cases he highlights make for fascinating reading. The author acknowledges that while executions and death sentences have decreased significantly, there remains a great amount of work to see it "grind to a slow and painful halt after an accumulation of wrongs." Concise, convincing arguments against the continuation of capital punishment in America. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.