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Death Penalty Bibliography

There is a voluminous literature on the death penalty. Many works provide scholarly accounts analyzing capital punishment from a legal, moral, political sociological, or historical perspective without recommending a public policy position on the issue. Other writers, however, engage in vigorous advocacy either in support of the death penalty or favoring its abolition. Among those volumes that take a normative position, the vast majority urges an end to capital punishment. Listed below is a representative sample of works dealing with the death penalty from a wide variety of perspectives.

Acker, James R., and David R. Karp, eds. Wounds that Do Not Bind: Victim-Based Perspectives on the Death Penalty. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2006.

Allen, Howard W., and Jerome M. Club, and Vincent A. Lacey. Race, Class, and the Death Penalty: Capital Punishment in American History. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008.

Anckar, Carsten. Determinants of the Death Penalty. New York: Routledge, 2004.

Atwell, Mary W. Evolving Standards of Decency: Popular Culture and Capital Punishment. New York: Peter Lang, 2004.

Bae, Sangmin. When the State No Longer Kills. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007.

Baldus, David C., George Wordworth, and Charles A. Pulaski, Jr. Equal Justice and the Death Penalty: A Legal and Empirical Analysis. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1989.

Banner, Stuart. The Death Penalty: An American History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002.

Baumgartner, Frank R., Suzanna L. DeBoef, and Amber E. Boydstun. The Decline of the Death Penalty and the Discovery of Innocence. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Beck, Elizabeth, Sarah Britto, and Arlene Andrews. In the Shadow of Death: Restorative Justice and Death Row Families. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Bedau, Hugo Adam, ed. The Death Penalty in America: Current Controversies. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Bedau, Hugo Adam. Death is Different. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1987.

Bedau, Hugo Adam. Killing as Punishment: Reflections on the Death Penalty in America. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2004.

Berger, Raoul. Death Penalties: The Supreme Court’s Obstacle Course. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982.

Bessler, John D. Death in the Dark: Midnight Executions in America. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1997.

Bessler, John D. Kiss of Death: America’s Love Affair with the Death Penalty. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2003.

Black, Charles L. Capital Punishment: The Inevitability of Caprice and Mistake, 2d ed. New York: Norton, 1981.

Bohm, Robert M. Deathquest. Cincinnati, OH: Anderson, 1999.

Borgida, Eugene, and Susan T. Fiske, eds. Beyond Common Sense: Psychological Science in the Courtroom. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008.

Brandon, Craig. The Electric Chair: An Unnatural American History. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1999.

Burnett, Cathleen. Justice Denied: Clemency Appeals in Death Penalty Cases. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2002.

Cabana, Don. Death at Midnight: The Confession of an Executioner. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1996.

Carrington, Frank. Neither Cruel nor Unusual. New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House, 1978.

Carter, Linda E., Ellen S. Kreitzberg, and Scott W. Howe. Understanding Capital Punishment Law, 2d ed. Newark, NJ: LexisNexis Matthew Bender, 2008.

Clarke, Alan W., and Laurelyn Whitt. The Bitter Fruit of American Justice. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2007.

Cook, Kinberly J. Divided Passions: Public Opinions on Abortion and the Death Penalty. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1997.

Costanzo, Mark. Just Revenge: Costs and Consequences of the Death Penalty. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997.

Coyne, Randall, and Lyn Entzeroth. Capital Punishment and the Judicial Process, 2d ed. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2001.

Crump, David, and George Jacobs. A Capital Case in America. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2000.

Culbert, Jennifer L. Dead Certain: The Death Penalty and the Problem of Judgment. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008.

Davis, Angela J. Arbitrary Justice: The Power of the American Prosecutor. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Davis, Michael. Justice in the Shadow of Death. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996.

Dicks, Shirley. Death Row. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1990.

Dorpat, Theodore. Crimes of Punishment: America’s Culture of Violence. New York: Algora, 2007.

Dow David R., and Mark Dow, eds. Machinery of Death: The Reality of America’s Death Penalty Regime. New York: Routledge, 2002.

Dow, David R. Executed on a Technicality: Lethal Injustice on America’s Death Row. Boston: Beacon Press, 2005.

Edds, Margaret. An Expendable Man: The Near-Execution of Earl Washington, Jr. New York: New York University Press, 2003.

Edelman, Bryan C. Racial Prejudice, Juror Empathy, and Sentencing in Death Penalty Cases. New York: LFB Scholarly Pub., 2006.

Epstein, Lee, and Joseph F. Kobylka. The Supreme Court and Legal Change: Abortion and the Death Penalty. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1992.

Eshelman, Byron E. Death Row Chaplain. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1962.

Essig, Mark Regan. Edison and the Electric Chair: A Story of Light and Death. New York: Walker, 2003.

Ewing, Charles Patrick, and Joseph T. McCann. Minds on Trial: Great Cases in Law and Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Fellner, Jamie, Rosa Ehrenreich, and Michelle Caldera. Beyond Reason: The Death Penalty and Offenders with Mental Retardation. Washington: Human Rights Watch, 2001.

Fleury-Steiner, Benjamin. Jurors’ Stories of Death. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004.

Foley, Michael A. Arbitrary and Capricious: The Supreme Court, the Constitution, and the Death Penalty. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003.

Frazier, Harriet C. Death Sentences in Missouri, 1803-2005: A History and Comprehensive Registry of Legal Executions, Pardons, and Commutations. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2006.

Fuhrman, Mark. Death and Justice: An Expose of Oklahoma’s Death Row Machine. New York: Morrow, 2003.

Galliher, John F. America Without the Death Penalty: States Leading the Way. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2002.

Garvey, Stephen P., ed. Beyond Repair: America’s Death Penalty. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003.

Gerber, Rudolph J., and John M. Johnson. The Top Ten Death Penalty Myths: The Politics of Crime Control. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007.

Gershman, Gary P. Death Penalty on Trial. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2005.

Gettinger, Stephen H. Sentenced to Die. New York: Macmillan, 1979.

Gillespie, L. Kay. Dancehall Ladies: The Crimes and Executions of America’s Condemned Women. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1997.

Goldman, Raphael. Capital Punishment. Washington: CQ Press, 2002.

Gonzales-Day, Ken. Lynching in the West, 1850-1935. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006.

Gross, Samuel R., and Robert Mauro. Death and Discrimination. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1989.

Grossman, Mark. Encyclopedia of Capital Punishment. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 1998.

Haines, Herbert H. Against Capital Punishment: The Anti-Death Penalty Movement in America, 1972-1994. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Hamm, Theodore. Rebel and a Cause: Caryl Chessman and the Politics of the Death Penalty in Postwar California, 1948-1974. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001.

Haney, Craig. Death By Design: Capital Punishment as Social Psychological System. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Heilbrun, Alfred B. The Death Penalty: Beyond the Smoke and Mirrors. Lanham, MA: University Press of America, 2006.

Hodgkinson, Peter, and William Schabas, eds. Capital Punishment: Strategies for Abolition. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Hood, Roger G. The Death Penalty: A Worldwide Perspective. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Johnson, Robert. Condemned to Die. New York: Elsevier, 1981.

Kaufman-Osborn, Timothy. From Noose to Needle. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2002.

Kay, Judith W. Murdering Myths: The Story Behind the Death Penalty. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005.

King, Gilbert. The Execution of Willie Francis: Race, Murder and he Search for Justice in the American South. New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2008.

King, Rachel. Capital Consequences. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005.

King, Rachel. Don’t Kill in Our Names. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003.

Kudlac, Christopher S. Public Executions: The Death Penalty and the Media. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007.

Lanzer, Barry. Death Penalty Cases: Leading U.S. Supreme Court Cases on Capital Punishment. Boston: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2002.

Lifton, Robert Jay. Who Owns Death? Capital Punishment, the American Conscience, and the End of Executions. New York: Morrow, 2000.

MacNair, Rachel M., and Stephen Zunes. Consistently Opposing Killing. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2008.

Masur, Louis P. Rites of Execution. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.

McFeely, William S. Proximity to Death. New York: W.W. Norton, 2000.

Mello, Michael. Against the Death Penalty: The Relentless Dissents of Justices Brennan and Marshall. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1996.

Mello, Michael. Deathwork: Defending the Condemned. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2002.

Mello, Michael. The Wrong Man: A True Story of Innocence on Death Row. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2001.

Meltsner, Michael. Cruel and Unusual. New York: Random House, 1973.

Meltsner, Michael. The Making of a Civil Rights Lawyer. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia, Press, 2006.

Melusky, Joseph A., and Keith A. Pesto. Cruel and Unusual Punishment. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2003.

Mialon, Hugo M., and Rubin, Paul H., eds. Economics, Law, and Individual Rights. New York: Routledge, 2008.

Miller, Arthur S., and Jeffrey H. Bowman. Death by Installments: The Ordeal of Willie Francis. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1988.

Miller, Kent S., and Michael L. Radelet. Executing the Mentally Ill: The Criminal Justice System and the Case of Alvin Ford. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1993.

Mulvey-Roberts, Marie. Writing for Their Lives: Death Row U.S.A. Urbana: IL: University of Illinois Press, 2007.

Nakell, Barry, and Kenneth A. Hardy. The Arbitrariness of the Death Penalty. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987.

Nathanson, Stephen. An Eye for an Eye. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001.

O’Shea, Kathleen A. Women and the Death Penalty in the United States, 1900-1998. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999.

Ogletree, Charles J., Jr., and Austin Sarat. From Lynch Mobs to the Killing State: Race and the Death Penalty in America. New York: New York University Press, 2006.

Persily, Nathaniel, Jack Citrin, and Patrick J. Egan, eds. Public Opinion and Constitutional Controversy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Pojman, Louis P., and Jeffrey Reiman. The Death Penalty: For and Against. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998.

Prejean, Helen. Dead Man Walking. New York: Random House, 1993.

Prejean, Helen. The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions. New York: Random House, 2005.

Prettyman, E. Barrett. Death and the Supreme Court. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1961.

Reed, Emily Fabrycki. The Penry Penalty: Capital Punishment and Offenders with Mental Retardation. Landham, MD.: University Press of America, 1993.

Rise, Eric W. The Martinsville Seven: Race, Rape and Capital Punishment. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1995.

Rossi, Richard M. Waiting to Die: Life on Death Row. London: Vision, 2004.

Russell, Gregory D. The Death Penalty and Racial Bias: Overturning Supreme Court Assumptions. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994.

Sarat, Austin. When the State Kills. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001.

Schabas, William. The Death Penalty as Cruel Treatment and Torture: Capital Punishment Challenges in the World’s Courts. Boson: Northeastern University Press, 1996.

Sharp, Susan F. Hidden Victims: The Effects of the Death Penalty on Families of the Accused. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005.

Sheleff, Leon Shaskolsky. Ultimate Penalties. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University, 1987.

Shipman, Marlin. "The Penalty is Death": U.S. Newspaper Coverage of Women’s Executions. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2002.

Simon, Rita James. A Comparative Analysis of Capital Punishment. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2002.

Solotaroff, Ivan. The Last Face You’ll Ever See: The Private Life of the American Death Penalty. New York: HarperCollins, 2001.

Sorensen, Jonathan R., and Rocky LeAnn Pilgrim. Lethal Injection: Capital Punishment in Texas during the Modern Era. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2006.

Stack, Richard A. Dead Wrong: Violence, Vengeance, and the Victims of Capital Punishment. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006.

Stearns, Peter N. Revolutions in Sorrow: The American Experience of Death in Global Perspective. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2007.

Steelwater, Eliza. The Hangman’s Knot: Lynching, Legal Execution, and America’s Struggle with the Death Penalty. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2003.

Streib, Victor L. Death Penalty for Juveniles. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1987.

Streib, Victor L. The Fairer Death: Executing Women in Ohio. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2006.

Sundby, Scott E. A Life and Death Decision: A Jury Weighs the Death Penalty. New York: Palgrave Macmillian, 2005.

Turow, Scott. Ultimate Punishment: A Lawyer’s Reflections on Dealing with the Death Penalty. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2003.

Tushnet, Mark V. The Death Penalty. New York: Facts on File, 1994.

Vollum, Scott. Last Words and the Death Penalty: Voices of the Condemned and Their Co-Victims. New York: LFB Scholarly Publishing, 2008.

White, Welsh D. Litigating in the Shadow of Death: Defense Attorneys in Capital Cases. An Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2006.

White, Welsh S. The Death Penalty in the Nineties. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1991.

Zimring, Franklin E. The Contradictions of American Capital Punishment. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.