The Slow Death of the Death Penalty
Toward a Postmortem
Mary Welek Atwell editor Todd C Peppers editor Jamie Almallen editor
Format:Paperback
Publisher:New York University Press
Publishing:1st Jul '25
£27.99
This title is due to be published on 1st July, and will be despatched as soon as possible.

Why the death penalty is in decline across the United States
Across the country, the death penalty is dying. Twenty-two states have abandoned state-sanctioned executions, including nine in the last fifteen years. Of the twenty-eight states that still have the death penalty, eight have not had an execution in over a decade. And public support for the death penalty has declined from 80% of the surveyed population in the early 1990s to approximately 50% today.
As the death penalty slowly withers away, Todd C. Peppers, Jamie Almallen, and Mary Welek Atwell bring together a number of distinguished death-penalty scholars, activists, and attorneys to take an accounting of the damage inflicted by the machinery of death. Contributors to the book point to a range of different pathologies which have caused politicians and voters to turn against capital punishment, from unacceptable rates of false convictions and racially motivated prosecutions, to a clemency process poisoned by political factors.
Essay topics include various dimensions of the death penalty, including racial and gender bias; economic costs; the conviction of juveniles, the mentally ill, and the factually innocent; Supreme Court decisions; and the failure of the death penalty to serve as a deterrent against crime. This important volume is an up-to-date accounting of the current state and, as the contributors argue, the future demise of the death penalty.
As the American death penalty has faded from our courtrooms, this highly readable and compelling volume collects the perspectives of frontline visionaries, scholars, and lawyers, conducting an autopsy of the penalty itself. * Brandon L. Garrett, author of End of Its Rope: How Killing the Death Penalty Can Revive Criminal Justice *
Those who favor the death penalty frequently cite tired theoretical tropes to condone its
use—that the killer will never kill again, that executing them permanently removes them from
society, or that executing them is cheaper and more efficient than ‘three hots and a cot’ in prison for life. These essays, however—written by some of America’s most renowned death penalty scholars—rip the lid off these theories to expose the true rotting underbelly of America’s death sentencing. The arbitrariness of those selected to die, the racial and gender inequalities, the bloated cost and wasteful bureaucracies, the pervasive law enforcement and prosecutorial corruption, and the absolute lack of deterrence are on full, bloody display. Whether for the death penalty or against, this book is a must read.
The Slow Death of the Death Penalty is a timely and eloquent book that helps us understand the decline of the death penalty in the last few decades. It is an essential source for scholars of the death penalty and a post mortem that will be remembered as a bellwether in legal studies. * Robert Johnson, co-author of Bone Orchard: Reflections on Life Under Sentence of Death *
In The Slow Death of the Death Penalty some of our most distinguished death penalty scholars reflect on the secular decline of American capital punishment, describing the processes that will, they believe, end the practice once and for all. At a moment when US federal authorities are bent on reviving this barbaric, anachronistic practice, this longer-term perspective is more vital than ever. * David Garland, author of Peculiar Institution: America’s Death Penalty in an Age of Abolition *
ISBN: 9781479819645
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
384 pages