Stay of Execution

Saving the Death Penalty from Itself

By (author) Charles Lane

Hardback - £14.99

Publication date:

16 December 2010

Length of book:

160 pages

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

ISBN-13: 9781442203785

The United States stands alone as the only Western democracy that still practices capital punishment. Yet the American death penalty has gone into noticeable decline, with annual death sentences and executions dwindling steadily in recent years. In Stay of Execution, Charles Lane offers a fresh analysis of this unexpected trend and its moral and political implications. Countering conventional wisdom that attributes the death penalty's decline to public rejection of the "ultimate sanction," he shows that it is instead related to the ebbing of violent crime itself. The death penalty is not only more popular than critics claim; it is also less flawed by wrongful executions or racial bias. Lane argues that capital punishment should be preserved, while proposing major reforms to address its real inequities and inconsistencies.
Though partisans often reiterate old talking points in death penalty debates, Charles Lane in Stay of Execution shows repeatedly why there is so much more to learn and say about the modern administration of capital punishment in the United States. Though I have spent much of the last two decades studying and writing about the death penalty, I learned new information and gained new insights from every chapter of Stay of Execution. This book is a must-read not only for students of the death penalty, but for any and everyone concerned about the modern intersection of politics, policy and punishment.