CUADP Book List
RECOMMENDED READINGS:
CUADP is pleased to provide links so that you can review and purchase these
titles directly from Amazon.com or Powells.com, depending on your
preference or book availability. Please note that availability and price
may vary.
Please note also that if you purchase one of these books by following
either of the links below the title, CUADP will receive a small percentage
of the purchase price. That said, we also urge you to consider your local
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Click here to go to our alphabetical index of titles.
Click here to see our featured addition
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15,543 and Counting : D.L. Carcara
On September 2, 1983, Jimmy Lee Gray died smashing his head into a metal pole located behind his head as a result of being strapped to a
chair and forced to inhale a deadly mixture of sulfuric acid and hydrogen cyanide. On May 4, 1990,
Jesse Tafero, at the time living and breathing, died after being set on fire while completely incapacitated being bound to a chair.
These instances sound much like the works of a sadistic serial killer torturing his victims,
but they are in reality the works of State Departments of Corrections here in America.
These documented cases as well as many more wrongs involving the administration of capital punishment in the
United States are found in 15,543 and Counting. Each and every step, from the very beginning of the guilt trial to the very end of the
cooling of the corpse, is addressed and accounted for in 15,543 and Counting. Among the countless informative sources are testimonies of
corrections officers assigned to the care and custody of death row inmates, as well as actual quotes from death row inmates themselves.
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The Activist's Handbook: A Primer
: Randy Shaw (updated 2001)
 The Activist's Handbook is a hard-hitting guide to winning social change in the 1990s. Randy Shaw, attorney and longtime activist for urban issues, shows how positive change can still be accomplished despite an increasingly grim political order, if activists employ the strategies set forth in this desperately needed primer. Inspiring "fear and loathing" in politicians, building diverse coalitions, and harnessing the media, the courts, and the electoral process to one's cause are only some of the key tactics Shaw advocates and explains. Central to all social- change activism, Shaw shows, is being proactive: rather than simply reacting to right-wing proposals, activists must develop an agenda and focus their resources on achieving it. (Book Description)
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Actual Innocence : Five Days to Execution and Other Dispatches from the Wrongly Convicted: Jim Dwyer, Peter Neufeld, Barry Scheck
A report on the many ways justice can go astray and an innocent person be convicted. Perhaps one of the more shocking of their revelations is the unreliability of eyewitness testimony; they present a case in which three eyewitnesses separately identified the defendant as a rapist/robber. [The authors] offer a litany of such errors, along with detailed case histories. [They] offer concrete advice on how these dangers can minimized. This is an alarming wake-up call to those who administer our justice system that serious flaws must be addressed to protect the innocent (
Publishers Weekly)
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Adams V. Texas: Randall Dale Adams, et al
"Adams's story gained nationwide attention in Errol Morris's . . . film, The Thin Blue Line, which {argued that} . . . Adams had been convicted in Texas of a policeman's murder, largely due to evidence given by the person who probably was the real killer. The film's acclaim and the attention it
brought to the case eventually led to Adams's release from prison, where he had served 12 years." (Libr J) This is an account of Adams's experiences.
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Against Time: Darrell Grayson
A lot of people in prison turn to poetry. Any poet—and any convict—can easily understand why. How rare, though, to discover writing of this quality by a man with so few resources, no poetry mentors, no workshops, and a limited collection of poetry books. My colleague, poet Sandra Agricola, says of Darrell's poetry, "such freedom evoked by one so confined."
This is a book of poems. It does not speak directly of the death penalty and will not argue a case to the reader. However, after hearing this voice, a reader cannot help but be reminded that the State of Alabama has the power to still it. We take comfort in knowing that years from now, regardless of those years go for Darrell, he will have left behind something good, something beautiful. We all hope that is true of our lives.
Proceeds from the sales of Darrell’s book go to Project Hope. We hope you’ll order a copy. Please consider ordering an extra copy or two for your friends. Put a copy in the hands of an open-minded person who is pro-Death Penalty. Remind them of the humanity of those who face execution.
To order, please send $13.00 ($12.00 plus $1.00 shipping and handling) to:
Mercy Seat Press
2121 Vesthavia Drive
Birmingham, Alabama 35216
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Almost Home : My Life Story : Damien Echols
Almost Home is a message to you from a faraway place. It is a message from a 12-foot by 9-foot cell in a cinderblock building surrounded by coils of razor wire in the middle of a dirt field in Arkansas. It was written by a young man named Damien Echols and it chronicles his life and his experiences in a way that clearly illuminates him, not as a monster, but as a human being. For over 10 years Damien has been an inmate on death row for a crime he did not commit. He, along with Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley have become known as The West Memphis Three, and though the story of their arrest and conviction is widely known, most people don’t know the real people behind the sound bites and the TV news segment clips. Damien has spent much of his time behind bars diligently maintaining his integrity and his sanity by writing.
Almost Home is the product of that self-discipline, and in it you will meet someone who has survived an ordeal many of us would find impossible to live through. There are a few who still believe that Damien is a devil-worshipping child killer, but as time passes and more facts rise to the surface, it becomes even more clear that he is the victim of a peculiar species of hysteria. Read this book and know the truth about him. It is an urgent message from death row; the whole story of who Damien Echols really is.
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Almost Midnight: An American Story of Murder and Redemption: Michael W. Cuneo
Darrell Mease, the Ozarks-born convicted murderer who got a death row intervention from Pope John Paul II in 1998 (the execution was to take place on the day the Pope visited St. Louis), is at the center of this true crime saga. Cuneo (American Exorcism) follows Mease from his religious upbringing in the backwoods of Missouri, through his tour in Vietnam and baptism into the crystal methamphetamines trade to his love affair with Mary Epps and brutal murder of a drug kingpin, his wife and disabled grandson. Cuneo looks closely at Mease's time in prison, where he rediscovers religion and, while professing "God is my lawyer," is miraculously delivered from lethal injection just as he predicted he would be. Cuneo's detailed descriptions of the virtues (loyalty, self-reliance, faith, family) and negatives (violence, chemical dependency, lawlessness) of the Ozarks' culture not only fleshes out Mease's personality but also vividly portrays this overlooked area of Americana. Cuneo's skillful writing allows him to convey the romantic notions of Mease's outlaw ways and travels on America's back roads, while never romanticizing the violence or the hand-to-mouth living. The book could use a little more analysis, however, on the impact Vietnam and crystal meth had on Mease's psyche and behavior. When all is said and done, one cannot help but appreciate Cuneo's in-depth, interwoven stories of Mease and the Ozarks.
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America's Experiment with Capital Punishment: Reflections on the Past, Present, and Future of the Ultimate Penal Sanction: James R. Acker, Robert Bohm, and Charles S. Lanier (Eds.)
Comprises 21 essays which analyze changes in capital punishment and its administration over the last 25 years and explores issues relevant to the present and future of the death penalty in America. The essays address capital punishment public opinion, law and politics, the justice of the death penalty, the utility of the capital sanction, jury decision making,
defense counsel, race discrimination, mitigation theory, cost, habeas corpus, victims, the role of mental health professionals, and executive clemency. (Book News, Inc.)
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America Without the Death Penalty: States Leading the Way: John F. Galliher, Larry W. Koch, Teresa J. Guess, David Patrick Keys
Employing the case study method, the work focuses on the nine states-Michigan, Wisconsin, Maine, Minnesota, North Dakota, Hawaii, Alaska, Iowa, and West Virginia-that took legislative action. Three other states-Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Vermont-that banned the death penalty through court decisions are discussed, as is the District of Columbia's courageous fight against Congressional efforts to reestablish the death penalty in the nation's capital. The inquiry delves into the local relationship between death penalty abolition and numerous empirical factors, including: economic conditions, public sentiment, the roles of the political, social, and economic elite, the mass media, population diversity, murder rates, and the regional history of executions.
With its solid research and methodology, this work provides invaluable historical and practical information to advocates striving to abolish capital punishment in other states.
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In America's Court: How a Civil Lawyer Who Likes to Settle Stumbled into a Criminal Trial: Thomas Geoghegan
A candid indictment of the American criminal justice system from the acclaimed author of Which Side Are You On? In previous books, including the widely praised labor history Which Side Are You On?, attorney Thomas Geoghegan has written with an insight and sensibility that enable him to use the smallest details of life as microcosms of larger truths. In In America's Court, Geoghegan's personal account of his experience with criminal law, he directs this sensibility toward a re-evaluation of his own career as a civil lawyer and a critique of the criminal justice system. When asked by a friend and public defender to assist with the defense in a criminal case, Geoghegan realizes that his twenty years as a prominent labor lawyer in civil court—where most arguments are made for quick settlement in the judge's quarters—have left him totally unprepared for the realities of criminal justice in the United States. Particularly when the case at hand is the defense of a twenty-two-year-old who, at the age of fifteen, was sentenced to forty years in prison for acting as the unarmed lookout in a botched burglary attempt. Suddenly Geoghegan must face the whims of jury selection, prosecutorial advantage, and the simple fact that the course of their client's life will be determined by the case. In America's Court is a candid indictment of a criminal justice system that, by routinely imprisoning minors, violates what the rest of the world considers to be all of our basic human rights. In addition, In America's Court is a call to lawyers to act with courage despite the frustrations of the profession. Geoghegan argues that there remain aspects of the law that are heroic and unbroken, and that, rather than civil or criminal law, the law of human rights should be supreme. Written in a uniquely ironic and personal style, In America's Court is a fascinating narrative of justice denied.
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Among the Lowest of the Dead: The Culture of Capital Punishment (Law, Meaning, and Violence) (2nd Edition, June 2006): David von Drehle
"A compelling argument against capital punishment. . . . Examining politicians, judges (including Supreme Court Justices), prosecutors, defense attorneys and the condemned themselves, the author makes an effective case that, despite new laws, execution is no less a lottery than it has always been."
--Publishers Weekly
"Among the Lowest of the Dead is a powerfully written and meticulously researched book that makes an invaluable contribution to the growing public dialogue about capital punishment in America. It's one of those rare books that bridges the gap between mass audiences and scholarly disciplines, the latter including sociology, political science, criminology and journalism. The book is required reading in my Investigative Journalism classes--and my students love it!"
--David Protess, Northwestern University
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Among the Lowest of the Dead: David von Drehle
Von Drehle's argument against capital punishment emphasizes the capriciousness with which death penalty laws are applied (Publisher's Weekly)
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Back From The Dead: Joan M. Cheever
What would happen if the United States abolished the death penalty and emptied its Death Rows? If killers were released from prison? What would they do with their second chance to live? Would they kill again?
Back From The Dead is the story of 589 former death row inmates who, through a lottery of fate, were given a second chance at life in 1972 when the death penalty was abolished; it returned to the United States four years later.
During the years she represented Walter Williams on Texas’ Death Row, Cheever always wondered what would happen if his death sentence was reversed and he was eventually released from prison. Would he have killed again? Two years after Williams’ execution, Cheever was determined to find the answer. Leaving her young family and comfortable life in suburbia, she traveled across the U.S. and into the lives and homes of former Death Row inmates, armed only with a tape recorder, notepad, a cell phone that didn’t always work, and a lot of faith. In Back from the Dead , Cheever describes her own journey and reveals these tales of second chances: of tragedy and failure, racism and injustice, and redemption and rehabilitation.
Joan M. Cheever is an award-winning legal affairs journalist and a former managing editor of The National Law Journal. Cheever received her Bachelor’s degree from Southern Methodist University; a Master’s in journalism from Columbia University and her law degree from St. Mary’s University. She is a member of the bar in the states of Texas, New York and Connecticut.
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The Biblical Truth about America's Death Penalty: Dale S. Recinella (fall 2004)
While secular support for capital punishment in America seems to be waning, religious conservatives, particularly in the "Bible belt," remain staunch advocates of the death penalty, citing biblical law and practice to defend government-sanctioned killing. In this close reading of Hebrew and Christian scriptures, Dale S. Recinella compares biblical teaching about the death penalty, including such passages as "eye for eye, tooth for tooth, life for life," with the nation's current system of capital punishment, and offers persuasive arguments for a faith-based moratorium—and eventual abolition—of executions.
Framing his careful and incisive analysis as a legal brief to those who believe the Bible mandates the ultimate punishment, the author addresses two critical areas of inquiry: what do the scriptures tell us about who is deserving of death and who has the authority to kill, and what do they tell us about the required standards for execution and the plight of victims' families. Recinella's examination of the Hebrew Torah, or Christian Pentateuch, and the Talmud reveals that the biblical death penalty was not a simple system of swift retribution, but a complex and practical set of laws that guided capital courts established under the Sanhedrin. His scrutiny of these texts, the Christian doctrine of atonement, and Romans 13 in the Pauline Epistles, draws parallels between the traditional biblical arguments used in favor of capital punishment and those used as the basis for pro-slavery positions in the nineteenth century. Demonstrating that both approaches are unsubstantiated in biblical terms, Recinella debunks the accepted religious reasoning for support of the death penalty and shows instead that the Bible's strict conditions for sanctioning execution are at odds with the arbitrary ways in which capital punishment is administered in the United States. He provides convincing evidence that a sentence of death in today's criminal justice system in fact fails to meet both the Bible's exacting procedural requirements and its strict limitations upon judicial authority.
By providing actual scriptural language and foundation to counter the position that biblical truth justifies a pro-death penalty stance, this thoughtful, solidly researched, and well-reasoned work will give pause to religious fundamentalists and challenge them to rethink their strongly held views on capital punishment.
Dale S. Recinella is an attorney who serves as a state-certified spiritual counselor and Catholic lay chaplain for Florida's prison system, ministering to death row inmates and prisoners in long-term solitary confinement. He is also a columnist, public speaker, and frequent panelist on worldwide Vatican Radio. He lives in Macclenny, Florida.
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Bloodsworth: The True Story of the First Death Row Inmate Exonerated by DNA: Tim Junkin
Scheduled to be published by Algonquin in September (a review will be forthcoming).
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The Book of Daniel: E. L. Doctorow
The central figure of this novel is a young man whose parents were executed for conspiring to steal atomic secrets for Russia.
His name is Daniel Isaacson, and as the story opens, his parents have been dead for many years. He has had a long time to adjust to their deaths. He has not adjusted.
It is a book rich in characters, from elderly grand- mothers of immigrant culture, to covert radicals of the McCarthy era, to hippie marchers on the Pen-tagon. It is a book that spans the quarter-century of American life since World War II.It is a book about the nature of Left politics in this country—its sacrificial rites, its peculiar cruelties, its humility, its bitterness. It is a book about some of the beautiful and terrible feelings of childhood. It is about the nature of guilt and innocence, and about the relations of people to nations.
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Capital Consequences: Families Of The Condemned Tell Their Stories: Rachel King
Those who support capital punishment often claim that they do so because it provides justice and closure for the victims' families. In Capital Consequences, attorney Rachel King reminds us that there are other families and other victims who are excluded from the death penalty debate, and who should be considered.
Combining a narrative voice with vivid, passionate, and painful accounts of the families of death row inmates, the book describes how crimes that lead to death sentences also devastate the families of those convicted. These families, King argues, are the unseen victims of capital punishment.
King challenges readers to question the morality of a punishment that victimizes families of the condemned, having a ripple effect, through future generations. She tells the stories of families that have lost life savings supporting an accused loved one, endured intense public scrutiny, been subjected to harassment by the media, and are struggling to live with the inhumane treatment that their loved ones receive on death row. The author also explores the unique nature of the grief that these families suffer. Because their pain tends to attract less attention and empathy than that of the crime victims' families, King shows how it becomes much more desperate and isolating.
On a human level, this book is a powerful reminder that tragic events have tragic consequences that far outreach their immediate victims. At the same time, the accounts illustrate many of the flaws inherent in the judicial system-racial and economic bias, incompetent counsel, prosecutorial misconduct, the execution of juveniles, and wrongful convictions, some of which are only now being overturned as a result of recent advances in DNA technology.
Regardless of which side of the death penalty issue you are on, this book will lead you to pause and consider that all acts-criminal and retributive-have broader human implications than we are sometimes willing to realize.
This book can also be purchased from Rutgers University Press
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Capitalist Punishment: Prison Privatization & Human Rights: Rodney Neufeld (Editor), Allison Campbell, Andrew Coyle (Editor)
"Only a few years ago, prison privatization was being touted as a cure-all
for the ills of penal systems around the world. Today, mired in
disappointing results and awash in scandals, the experiment in
privatization is in trouble. This compelling book shows, in illuminating
detail, why the experiment has not lived up to its promises."
Elliott Currie - author of Crime and Punishment in America
Available from Clarity Press, Inc. or through links below.
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Capital Punishment and the Bible: Gardner C. Hanks (Herald Press, February 2002)
This new book by Hanks explores the death penalty by reviewing biblical references to capital
punishment in their historical context and by examining the U.S.'s
current application of the death penalty in light of these scriptures.
This book is a follow-up to an earlier work by Hanks, "Against the Death
Penalty."
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Capital Punishment----Strategies for Abolition: Edited by Peter Hodgkinson, University of Westminster
William A. Schabas, National University of Ireland, Galway
What are the critical factors that determine whether a country replaces,
retains or restores the death penalty? Why do some countries maintain the
death penalty in theory but in reality rarely invoke it? By asking these
questions, the editors hope to isolate the core issues that influence the
formulation of legislation so that they can be incorporated into
strategies for advising governments considering changes to their policy on
capital punishment. They also seek to redress the current imbalance in
research, which tends to focus almost exclusively on the experience of the
USA, by covering a range of countries such as South Korea, Lithuania,
Japan and the British Caribbean Commonwealth. This valuable contribution
to the debates around capital punishment contains contributions from
leading academics, campaigners and legal practitioners and will be an
important resource for students, academics, NGOs, policy makers, lawyers
and jurists.
February 2004
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Catholics And The Death Penalty: Six Things Catholics Can Do To End Capital Punishment: Robert H. Hopcke
Priced affordably for easy distribution in bulk, this booklet introduces Catholics to six concrete things they can do to help end the death penalty. This explosive and divisive social issue demands fuller attention on all sides, in particular from ordinary Catholics who may be ardent supporters of other pro-life issues. Hopcke encourages readers to pray, read, attend meetings where death penalty issues are being discussed, write, witness to the truth, and donate to pro-life charities and organizations.
This book is also available for ordering through St. Anthony's
Messenger Press. Please contact Christopher Holmes in the marketing
dept., telephone: 513-241-5615, ext. 161, email:
cgholmes@americancatholic.org
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Changing Lenses: A New Focus for Crime and Justice: Howard J. Zehr
Zehr's classic work is the best introduction to the concepts of restorative justice.
"Changing Lenses" details the abuses of our current retributive justice system and
proposes a new (and old) biblical, practical and indispensible vision for a criminal
system that restores justice.
Zehr combines his theological and intellectual insights with his experience as founder
of the first victim-offender mediation program in the United States. No one interested
in mediation or criminal justice should be without this book.
(Reader Review)
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Chasing the Devil - My Twenty-Year Quest to Capture the Green River Killer : Sheriff David Reichert
The riveting personal account of one sheriffs epic hunt for Americas most heinous serial killer.
For eight years, Sheriff David Reichert devoted days and nights to capturing the Green River Killer--the most notorious serial killer in American history. He was the first detective on the case in 1982 and doggedly pursued it as the body count climbed to 49 and it became the most infamous unsolved case in the nation. Frantically following all leads, even as more bodies surfaced near the river outside Seattle, Sheriff Reichert befriended the victims families, publicly challenged the killer, and risked his own safety--and the endurance and love of his family--before he found his madman. But Reicherts hunt didnt end when he finally cornered a truck painter named Gary Ridgway. It would be yet another 11 haunting years before forensic science could prove Ridgways guilt beyond a shadow of a doubt.
CHASING THE DEVIL is the gripping firsthand account of Reicherts relentless pursuit--a 21-year odyssey full of near-misses and startling revelations. Told in vivid detail by the man who knows the whole story--the man who has stared into the eyes of absolute evil--this is a page-turning real-life suspense story of unparalleled heroism.
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A Checkered Past: William Van Poyke
This is an autobiography by Van Poyke, who was Frank Valdes' accomplice. (Valdes was murdered by Florida death row prison guards in
1999, and since then Van Poyke has lived on Virginia's death row.
In this sweeping, genre-blurring autobiography, [Van Poyke] guides
readers
through a vividly sketched tour, from privileged barefoot youth to reform
schools, prisons and death row.... This no-holds-barred, eye-opening saga
of human fallibility cuts close to the bone while resonating with life's
timeless themes of despair, hope and redemption."
This book may also be purchased from www.1stbooks.com (search the word "Past" under title) or call
800-839-8640.
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The Choice Is Yours: Shirley Dicks
A non fiction for kids from ten to twenty. A video by the
same name is also available filmed on Tennessee's death row.
In this book you will hear from some of the guys who are in prison, some who are on death row, who have done drugs, alcohol, been in gangs, committed robberies, killed and on and on. They will tell you about prison life and what it feels like to wait to die. To sit in a cell 24 hours a day and see the electric chair...knowing that one day they will be placed in it and will undergo the most horrible pain imaginable. All because they made the wrong choices in life.
Visit www.thechoiceisyours.org for ordering information and to read excerpts from the book
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Choosing Mercy: A Mother of Murder Victims Pleads to End the Death Penalty: Antoinette Bosco
Sometimes the most eloquent opponents of the death penalty are those who have the most obvious personal reasons
to demand this ultimate form of retribution: people who have lost loved ones in brutal, senseless crimes. In 1993
Bosco's son and his wife were shot and killed by an 18-year-old Montana neighbor. Bosco, a journalist, had long
opposed the death penalty, partly because of family history, but the Montana murders made the issue even more
central for her. Like some other family members of crime victims, Bosco found that forgiveness was an essential
element of healing. She got involved in victim support groups and then prison visitation, becoming an activist,
not simply for elimination of the death penalty, but also for radical reform of the prison system. Choosing
Mercy is a highly personal story, describing Bosco's experiences and those of other parents and relatives Bosco
has encountered in campaigning for a criminal justice system that would honor victims by blending justice with
mercy. A valuable supplement to more academic studies of this issue.
(Mary Carroll, Booklist)
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Circumstantial Evidence - Death, Life, and Justice in a Southern Town: Pete Earley (Walter McMillian's story)
A piercing, provocative true story that is also a commentary on our system of justice,
centred around a wrongful murder conviction that bares the dark side of the American soul. This book highlights a case that was front page news--featured on "60 Minutes, " in The New York Times in 1993.
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Congregation of the Condemned - Voices against the Death Penalty: Shirley Dicks
A collection of 49 essays calling for an end to the death penalty--by death-row inmates,
members of victims' families, legal and medical experts, religious and political figures
(e.g. Edward Kennedy, Mario Cuomo), journalists (e.g. Tom Wicker), entertainers
(e.g. Mike Farrell, Peter Gabriel), and spokespersons from such organizations as
Amnesty International, the NAACP (Coretta Scott King), and the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.
(Book News)
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Come Walk With Me: Elaine Ruth Pope
"Come Walk With Me" is the true story about Horace Melvin Pope. It took the Author
several years to research and write it, but finally it can be
found at
www.xlibris.com/POPE.html>.
It is published in both soft cover and hard cover.
This is a story that will touch everyone who has a loved one behind prison walls.
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The Contradictions of American Capital Punishment: Franklin E. Zimring
Why does the United States continue to employ the death penalty when fifty other developed democracies have abolished it? Why does capital punishment become more problematic each year? How can the death penalty conflict be resolved? In The End of Capital Punishment in America, Frank Zimring reveals that the seemingly insoluble turmoil surrounding the death penalty reflects a deep and long-standing division in American values, a division that he predicts will soon bring about the end of capital punishment in our country. On the one hand, execution would seem to violate our nation's highest legal principles of fairness and due process. It sets us increasingly apart from our allies and indeed is regarded by European nations as a barbaric and particularly egregious form of American exceptionalism. On the other hand, the death penalty represents a deeply held American belief in violent social justice that sees the hangman as an agent of local control and safeguard of community values. Zimring uncovers the most troubling symptom of this attraction to vigilante justice in the lynch mob. He shows that the great majority of executions in recent decades have occurred in precisely those Southern states where lynchings were most common a hundred years ago. It is this legacy, Zimring suggests, that constitutes both the distinctive appeal of the death penalty in the United States and one of the most compelling reasons for abolishing it. Impeccably researched and engagingly written, The End of Capital Punishment in America casts a clear new light on America's long and troubled embrace of the death penalty.
(Editorial Review)
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Corpse: Nature, Forensics, and the Struggle to Pinpoint Time of Death: Jessica Snyder Sachs
Placing the time of death is very important in homicide investigations and in identifying decayed remains. Yet the exact measure of time of death has challenged people for the past 2000 years. The newly evolving multidisciplinary field of forensic ecology looks for ways to measure the time of death more accurately. Sachs, a freelance health and science writer, details the intricacies of human decay as it relates to deducing a time of death from a corpse. After reviewing the history of forensic pathology and the tradition of accurately or not so accurately placing the time of death, she explains the current state of the art. In particular, she concentrates on the use of clues such as maggots, plants, and pollens in and around the body to aid in the process. Sachs writes accessibly for the lay reader.
(source: Library Journal)
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The Cultural Lives of Capital Punishment: Comparative Perspectives : Austin Sarat and Christian Boulanger (editors.)
How does the way we think and feel about the world around us affect the existence and administration of the death penalty? What role does capital punishment play in defining our political and cultural identity?
After centuries during which capital punishment was a normal and self-evident part of criminal punishment, it has now taken on a life of its own in various arenas far beyond the limits of the penal sphere. In this volume, the authors argue that in order to understand the death penalty, we need to know more about the "cultural lives"—past and present—of the state’s ultimate sanction.
They undertake this "cultural voyage" comparatively—examining the dynamics of the death penalty in Mexico, the United States, Poland, Kyrgyzstan, India, Israel, Palestine, Japan, China, Singapore, and South Korea—arguing that we need to look beyond the United States to see how capital punishment "lives" or "dies" in the rest of the world, how images of state killing are produced and consumed elsewhere, and how they are reflected, back and forth, in the emerging international judicial and political discourse on the penalty of death and its abolition.
Contributors: Sangmin Bae Christian Boulanger Julia Eckert Agata Fijalkowski Evi Girling Virgil K.Y. Ho David T. Johnson Botagoz Kassymbekova Shai Lavi Jürgen Martschukat Alfred Oehlers Judith Randle Judith Mendelsohn Rood Austin Sarat Patrick Timmons Nicole Tarulevicz Louise Tyler--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Dancehall Ladies: Executed Women of the 20th Century: L. Kay Gillespie
In 1998, a mere six months after the publication of the first edition of "Dancehall Ladies", two more women were executed, adding to the previous total of 37 females executed by the United States. This revised edition includes their story, along with updated statistics. The book, filled with photographs that put faces with the statistics of capital punishment, examines the history of executed women in the United States. As the 20th century concludes, "Dancehall Ladies" provides powerful insight into America's dealings with women criminals in the past hundred years. It will certainly influence debate on the topic well into the new century.
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In a Dark Time: Dwight Harrison and Susannah Sheffer
Can a man return from an exile of his own making? Can he learn to
understand what he has done, and why?
"In a Dark Time" is the powerful story of a man's struggle to come to
terms with himself and his crimes.
A mix of psychology, literary memoir, and prison studies, the book
looks at the roots of violence and the struggle for rehabilitation in
a Massachusetts prisoner convicted of armed robbery and attempted
murder.
This book may also be obtained from Stone Lion Press
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Dead Man Walking: Ben Aronoff
"Dead Man Walking" is an autobiographical account of a regular guy who volunteers to tutor prisoners at the nearby prison - California's San
Quentin State Prison. After teaching murderers and child molesters the guitar, Ben Aronoff "crossed over" and became a guard and the Hobbycraft
Manager, before ultimately being "set up" and fired by those who did not like his compassionate attitude. The book does not deal with the death
penalty per se, but rather the condemned as students and long-time friends and collaborators. Aronoff's experiences in the book set the stage for his
future work with the condemned, and the life-changing experience of witnessing the execution of a very close friend.
Currently out of print, order this book by sending $15 payable to:
Ben Aronoff
P.O.Box 227
Sebastopol, Calif. 95473
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Dead Man Walking: Sister Helen Prejean, CSJ
A unique perspective on one of the greatest moral dilemmas in America, from a nun who works closely with both death-row inmates and the families of victims. Without denying the inmates' brutality, she nonetheless comes down squarely against institutionalized killing of criminals. "Sister Prejean...is an excellent writer, direct and honest and unsentimental; her accounts of crime and punishment are gripping, and her argument is persuasive" (NY Times Book Review)
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Dead Run - The Untold Story of Dennis Stockton and America's Only Mass Escape from Death Row: Joe Jackson, William F. Burke et al
 Dead Run is the stunning account of Dennis Stockton's life, using lengthy excerpts from his prison writings and told with harrowing immediacy by William F. Burke Jr., Stockton's editor at The Virginian-Pilot, and Joe Jackson, the reporter who investigated his unshakable claims of innocence. It is a riveting true-life thriller and an unforgettable, searing portrait of life on Death Row in America today
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Dead Wrong: A Death Row Lawyer Speaks Out Against Capital Punishment: Michael Mello
 A former fulltime capital public defender in Florida tells how the system works--and why it's wrong. "The real death penalty enterprise is a Rube Goldberg contraption kept clanking perpetually by the fuel of caffeinated lawyers and their cousins the poll-driven politicians. Michael Mello is a witness from inside the machine" (from the Foreword by David Von Drehle)
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Death and Justice: An Expose of Oklahoma's Death Row Machine: Mark Fuhrman - September 2003
Fuhrman thought he'd be a sympathetic observer when he decided to focus on conservative Oklahoma County while researching the death penalty. Little did he know that his own research would turn his views upside down. After the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, "frontier justice," as Fuhrman calls it, became the norm in Oklahoma. Overzealous law-enforcement officials would find a suspect and retrofit the evidence. Heading up this practice was the extremely popular D.A., Bob Macy, and his most trusted forensic scientist, Joyce Gilchrist. With the precision of a first-rate detective--which, O.J. notwithstanding, Fuhrman truly is--he breaks down several death-penalty cases that relied on rather questionable investigative techniques and considerably suspect scientific reasoning. When faced with the possibility that innocent people might have been executed at the hands of an overly ambitious prosecutorial machine, Fuhrman reconsiders his position on the matter: "Macy's career showed me the futility of vengeance. Evil cannot be met with evil, no matter how it is justified. The whole point of law enforcement is to serve justice, not your own ego, ambition, or pathology." With every offering, Fuhrman, once reviled, is showing himself to be a courageous man who dares to take on his own industry. Dominick Dunne, look out.
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Death by Design: Craig Haney
How can otherwise normal, moral persons --as citizens, voters, and jurors --participate in a process that is designed to take the life of another? In Death by Design, research psychologist Craig Haney argues that capital punishment, and particularly the sequence of events that lead to death sentencing itself, is maintained through a complex and elaborate social psychological system that distance and disengage us from the true nature of the task. Relying heavily on his own research and that of other social scientists, Haney suggests that these social psychological forces enable persons to engage in behavior from which many of them otherwise would refrain. However, by facilitating death sentencing in these ways, this inter-related set of social psychological forces also undermines the reliability and authenticity of the process, and compromises the fairness of its outcomes. Because these social psychological forces are systemic in nature --built into the very system of death sentencing itself --Haney concludes by suggesting a number of inter-locking reforms, derived directly from empirical research on capital punishment, that are needed to increase the fairness and reliability of the process.
The historic and ongoing public debate over the death penalty takes place not only in courtrooms, but also in classrooms, offices, and living rooms. This timely book offers stimulating insights into capital punishment for professionals and students working in psychology, law, criminology, sociology, and cultural area studies. As capital punishment receives continued attention in the media, it is also a necessary and provocative guide that empowers all readers to come to their own conclusions about the death penalty.
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The Death Game - Capital Punishment and the Luck of the Draw: Mike Gray (April 2003)
In 1998, Mike Gray changed the political landscape with his book Drug
Crazy: How We Got Into This Mess and how we can get out. His book is
credited with turning the staunch Republican Governor of New Mexico
against the drug war.
Now, with The Death Game, he is destined to transform the terrain of
criminal justice.
Written with the power of a gritty novel, this documentary on the
death penalty shows why justice and capital punishment don't mix. Mike
Gray zeros in on issues of police brutality, pressures on prosecutors and
judges seeking career advancement, and the frailty of eyewitness accounts.
INTRO BY Rudolph Gerber, retired judge who crafted Arizona's death
penalty law in the 1970s after his boss, the future Supreme Court Justice
Sandra Day O'Connor, asked him for "A death penalty law we can live with."
FOREWORD BY sitting Judge Daniel Gaul, Common Pleas Court of Cleveland
Available from Common Courage Press or through links below.
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Death in the Dark: Midnight Executions in America: by John D. Bessler (1997)
 Public executions were once a fixture of American society, explains the author of this well-researched history of capital punishment in the United States. It was commonplace for the condemned to be hanged in the public commons in full view of a boisterous crowd. But by the 1820s, attitudes had changed. Rather than ceasing executions, the lawmakers moved them inside the prisons where, to this day, they are carried out with few witnesses. Bressler, an authority on constitutional law, contends that these private executions, usually carried out after midnight, shield Americans from the reality of the death penalty. He argues that executions should be televised so that they would be as public as in the old days. He feels that with a clear view of state-sanctioned killings, people would perhaps have a different attitude about them. This chilling and well-argued work is highly recommended for crime collections. Frances O. Sandiford, Green Haven Correctional Facility Lib., Stormville, N.Y.
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The Death of Innocents : An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions: Sister Helen Prejean, CSJ
Activist nun Prejean, whose crusade against the death penalty became widely known after Susan Sarandon portrayed her in the Oscar-winning film adaptation of her first book, Dead Man Walking, has again crafted a passionate indictment of the American criminal justice system. This time, with gripping, heartrending detail, Prejean draws on her experience advocating for two men she believes to have been innocent, but who were condemned to death row—Dobie Gillis Williams and Joseph O'Dell. While the book's subtitle removes any element of suspense, few readers will miss it. Instead, many will be outraged at a "machinery of death" weighted against the poor and African-Americans, featuring technical obstacles placed in the way of men desperately fighting for a fair hearing of evidence never elicited at their trials (O'Dell was denied appellate review by the highest court in Virginia because his lawyers typed one wrong word on his petition's title page). Prejean's tale involves a tragic, but not atypical, confluence of aggressive prosecutors (such as those in Louisiana, who display a "Big Prick" award featuring the state bird clutching in its talons a hypodermic needle used in lethal injections in its talons) and inept, ill-trained and apathetic defense attorneys. This damning critique should make even supporters of capital punishment pause, and the author's celebrity status, coupled with a timely message, should propel this onto bestseller lists.
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Death Nation: The Experts Explain American Capital Punishment: By Matthew B. Robinson
Based on empirical evidence, Death Nation offers a fair and reasoned analysis of capital punishment as it is actually practiced in the United States. It includes a discussion of death penalty history, an analysis of the death penalty law and a discussion of various policy implications. Rather than present philosophical or moral arguments, it presents findings from a survey administered to dozens of capital punishment experts throughout the United States. Included in the book are fact check sections that analyze these expert opinions for accuracy based on available empirical evidence. Examines important questions such as: Do executions reduce murder?; Is capital punishment biased against any race, gender, or class of people?; Is the death penalty used against the innocent?; Is the application of the death penalty plagued by significant problem?; Why is the United States the only western industrialized nation to continue to carry out executions? Uses empirical evidencerather than philosophical or moral arguments, to analyze the realities of the death penalty as it is actually practiced in the United States. Captures and presents the opinions of capital punishment experts with regard to the effectiveness of the death penalty in America, as well as its alleged problems. Anyone interested in capital punishment within the United States and those involved with death penalty policies and states that maintain capital punishment
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The Death Penalty: An American History: Stuart Banner
 In this well-researched and clear account,
Washington University law professor Banner charts how and why this country went from having one of the world's mildest punitive systems to one of its harshest.
In colonial America, criminals were hanged before large crowds in elaborate rituals that included sermons and prayers.
All serious crimes robbery, arson, counterfeiting were capital offenses.
But gradually, opposition to execution took root and, by the 1780s, it was considered by many to be a feudal relic incompatible with human progress; resulting penal reforms significantly reduced the use of capital punishment. By the Civil War, a prolonged debate led three northern states to abolish it, while the rest limited its application to murderers (the South's opinions on the matter remained more or less unchanged). As 19th-century "elites" withdrew from the crowds at public executions, the mood turned against them altogether; when executions were moved inside prison walls, they no longer presented the public with their traditional (and gruesome) brand of deterrence. But, as Banner shows, in the last few decades, the number of executions has surged. Today, he contends, the death penalty is "an emotionally charged political issue administered within a legal framework so unworkable that it satisfie[s] no one." Publishers Weekly.
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The Death Penalty - An Historical and Theological Survey: James Megivern
 This original, timely and definitive study will be an important resource for both scholars and the general public. The Death Penalty includes more information on the history of thinking about capital punishment than is available in any other English work.
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The Death Penalty In America: Hugo Adam Bedau
In The Death Penalty in America: Current Controversies, Hugo Adam Bedau, one of our
pre-eminent scholars on the subject, provides a comprehensive source-book on the death penalty, making the process of informed consideration not only possible but fascinating as well. No mere revision of the third edition of The Death Penalty in America (1982) this volume brings together an entirely new selection of 40 essays and includes updated statistical and research data, recent Supreme Court decisions, and the best current contributions to the debate over capital punishment. From the status of the death penalty worldwide to current attitudes of Americans toward convicted killers, from legal arguments challenging the constitutionality of the death penalty to moral arguments enlisting the New Testament in support of it, from controversies over the role of race and class in the judicial system to proposals to televise executions, Bedau gathers readings that explore all the most compelling aspects of this most compelling issue.
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Death Penalty in a Nutshell: (Nutshell Series) Victor Streib
Covering both the substantive law and the procedural law of the death
penalty, this title begins with the arguments for and against the death
penalty and an explanation of its basic constitutional challenges and
limitations. Major sections cover capital crimes and defenses, as well as
trial level and post-trial procedural issues. Special topics such as race
and gender bias and executing the innocent are included, as well as a
section on international and foreign law issues. This Nutshell serves both
as supplemental reading for students in death penalty courses and as a
concise, narrative explanation of death penalty law.
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The Death Penalty on Trial (crisis in American Justice): Bill Kurtis
Bill Kurtis, anchor of the wildly popular true-crime TV series Cold Case Files and American Justice, used to support the death penalty. But after observing the machinations of the justice system for X years, he came to a stunning realization that changed his life: Capital punishment is wrong. There can be no real justice in America until it is abolished.
In Death Penalty on Trial, Kurtis takes readers on his most remarkable investigative journey yet. Together, we revisit murder scenes, study the evidence, and explore the tactical decisions made before and during trial, which sent innocent people to death row. We examine the eight main reasons why the wrong people are condemned to death, including overzealous and dishonest prosecutors, corrupt policemen, unreliable witnesses and expert witnesses, incompetent defense attorneys, bias judges, and jailhouse informants. We see why the new jewel of forensic science, DNA, is revealing more than innocence and guilt, opening a window into the criminal justice system that could touch off a revolution of reform. Ultimately we come to a remarkable conclusion: The possibility for error in our justice system is simply too great to allow the death penalty to stand as our ultimate punishment.
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The Death Penalty: A Worldwide Perspective: Roger Hood (January
2003)
This is the completely revised and updated third edition of Roger Hood's classic study on the death penalty. In it he surveys and analyses the status of the death penalty as a punishment worldwide, taking into account the changes that have taken place during the six years since the last edition was published. This new edition is especially valuable at a time when more and more countries are joining the movement to abolish the death penalty worldwide.
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Death Row Chaplain: Rev. Byron E. Eshelman, Frank Riley
Rev. Mr. Eshelman was the supervising and protestant (United Church of
Christ) chaplain at San Quentin, CA, from 1951 through 1971.
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Death Row Defender: Ray Dix
This intelligently written mystery holds your attention on a number of levels.
It certainly is an "eye-opener" for the average citizen in regards to our perception
of "justice", law, and the death penalty. Even if you have no opinion at all (really?)
on the subject, reading this book should definitely give you pause. If you just love a
good mystery and don't care a fig about death row, the book will hook you in quickly. You do want to know what will happen next and it makes you care about the characters. If you are a Floridian and a Pinellas County resident in particular, or even just the occasional visitor, you will also enjoy the Margaritaville flavor and revisiting familiar places.
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From Death Row With Love: By Margot Aczel
From Death Row with Love depicts the journey undertaken by Margôt to discover the life of
one man on Death Row in Texas. She meets Ted Cole, a convicted double murderer,
who has been on death row for a number of years, at the request made by her friend
Sister Elder. This journey of discovery is related in a candid way and the reader
is often left asking the question "why?" Why are the prisoners kept in such inhumane
conditions? Why are they treated the way they are? Why? Why? Why? These questions
continue to flood the mind of the reader, who is left with no real answer at the end of
the book, except to want to do something to help.
The book contains more than 400 pages, together with poems and photos. It
has also a special introduction by Cardinal Cormac Murphy-OConnor,
Archbishop of Westminster.
This book is published by Pirata Publications and is available directly from:
Margôt Aczel
Marine Crescent,
Deganwy,
Conway County,
LL31 9BY, UK.
For further information, please contact Margôt Aczel margotaczel@totalise.co.uk
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Death Work: A Study of the Modern Execution Process: Robert Johnson (Wadsworth,l998, 2nd edition)
This text is a frank and unsettling look at the consequences of the death penalty in the United States.
The author takes the reader on a compelling, step-by-step journey through the world of American executions,
from the prisoners who spend years on death row to the prison staff who guard the condemned and the people who are executioners.
Utilizing both ethnographic and quantitative research, this book creates a dramatic presentation of all sides of this controversial topic
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Deathwork: Defending the Condemned: Michael Mello
Legal cases are stories, and some of the most compelling and the most
disturbing are those that take place on death row: the innocent man
executed, juveniles and the mentally ill condemned to die, a smoking
electric chair, a napping defense attorney, a senile hit man. These are
the stories in which Michael Mello, as a capital public defender, played a
crucial role, and they are the cases that make up Deathwork, a
moment-by-moment, behind-the-scenes look at the life and work of a death
row lawyer and his clients.
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Defending Civil Resistance Under International Law: Francis Anthony Boyle
This book is a must for any person who has taken part in a civil resistance action, or who has contemplated doing so. See how this defense can not only give you your best chance to avoid jail, but can also advance the cause for which you risked arrest.
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Defending Mohammad, Justice on Trial: Robert E. Precht
This is the inside story of an epic courtroom showdown between terrorism and the American legal system. On a snowy day in February 1993, a massive car bomb nearly toppled the World Trade Center. Four Middle Eastern men were quickly arrested and charged with the crime. At the time, Robert E. Precht was a staff attorney for the Legal Aid Society Federal Defender Division in Manhattan, handling routine cases as a public defender. He was surprised to be appointed defense attorney to the chief suspect, Mohammad Salameh, and challenged as never before by the media circus that this major terrorism trial would prove to be. The events and personalities of the trial make for gripping reading, but equally compelling are Precht’s observations on the forces arrayed against fair trials for accused terrorists.
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Desire Street : A True Story of Death and Deliverance in New Orleans
: Jed Horne
"What Jed Horne does in this book is show you a right and wrong that runs beside guilt and innocence like the New Orleans streetcar runs beside heavy traffic. In a state and an area where the lines of the law have blurred into wrongdoing for two centuries, Horne takes a modern-day case and shows what can happen when a rush to convict overrides the protections of the system. Grippingly written, it leaves you with a shaken sense of a system we need to believe in." --Rick Bragg, author of All Over But the Shoutin'
"Desire Street is an absorbing story of the life-and-death legal battle that follows a murder. Told from different perspectives, it becomes a window into the horrific flesh-and-blood workings of the criminal justice system, where prejudice, politics, and professional ambitions--more than anything else--shape what passes for justice today. Unfortunately, the nightmarish world Horne reveals isn’t unique to New Orleans, nor to Louisiana." --Wilbert Rideau, editor of The Angolite, the inmate publication of the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola
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The Devil's Playground - Behind Prison Walls: Shirley Dicks
As the mother of a man who spent more than 15 years on Tennessee’s death row and then died of neglect in prison before his sentence was ever carried out, Shirley Dicks has many years of bitter experience with America’s penal system. In this book she presents a graphic and disturbing insider’s view of the many abuses that occur behind prison walls. Based not only on what she witnessed firsthand in almost daily visits to her son, but also on information from her many contacts in the prison-reform network, Dicks describes three main areas of persistent abuse that cry out for attention: medical neglect, as a result of which many prisoners, like her son, die prematurely from serious, untreated conditions like heart disease, cancer, and AIDS; sexual abuse of both male and female prisoners, not only by fellow inmates but by predatory guards; and the general environment of sadism and brutality, which all too often characterizes the treatment of prisoners by guards and supervisors.
Dicks argues that these terrible conditions only encourage the violence and lawlessness for which many prisoners were originally incarcerated, and they turn those jailed for minor offenses into hardened criminals who see no alternative to a life of crime. She concludes with suggestions for reform including educational options for nonviolent prisoners to give them a chance to become responsible self-supporting citizens after their release.
For all who care about improving our justice system and seriously addressing the cycle of crime, Dick’s critical, shocking account is a must read.
Prometheus New Releases - Late 2002, 345 pages ISBN 1-59102-039-5 HC $26 (6” x 9”)
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Don't Kill In Our Names: Families of
Murder Victims Speak Out Against the Death Penalty: Rachel King
Rachel King, well known attorney in Washington DC is the author of this book which features many MVFR stories such as Bill Pelke, Marietta Jaegar, Jennifer Bishop, SueZann Bosler and others....
(Rutgers University
Press, 800-446-9323).
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Our Endangered Values : America's Moral Crisis: Jimmy Carter
Evangelical Christians in this country are familiar with the jeremiad, a sermon rousing the devout to renewed effort by highlighting how far they have wandered from the true and only faith. These days, jeremiads invariably attribute the abysmal crisis in which America allegedly finds itself to liberals and secular humanists. Teenage pregnancy, abortion, drug addiction, homosexuality -- these, we are told, are indications of our fallen state, the product of our mistaken belief that we can get by without the teachings of a just God.
Jimmy Carter's natural affinity is with the jeremiad. But Our Endangered Values, the prolific ex-president's latest book, finds fault not with secular humanists but with Christians, particularly those of the fundamentalist persuasion. Huge gaps between rich and poor, disrespect for human rights, cruel and unusual treatment of prisoners, a despoiled environment and a dangerous foreign policy -- these, for him, are the true indications of how far we have fallen. We used to believe that America stood as a moral beacon to the world. Because of the influence wielded by fundamentalists over our policies, Carter argues, we no longer can.
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Evolving Standards of Decency: Popular Culture and Capital Punishment: Mary Welek Atwell
The Supreme Court has looked to "evolving standards of decency" in determining whether the death penalty violates the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. Evolving Standards of Decency examines the ways in which popular culture portrays the death penalty. By analyzing literature and film, Atwell argues that capital punishment becomes much more complex when both offenders and victims are presented as fully developed individuals. Numerous books and films from the last several decades expose flaws in the criminal justice system and provide audiences with stories that raise questions about race, class, and actual innocence in the administration of the ultimate punishment. Although most people will not read legal briefs supporting or challenging the death penalty, many will see films or read novels that raise issues about its fairness. Themes and images gathered through popular culture may ultimately influence whether Americans continue to believe that capital punishment conforms to their evolving standards of decency and justice. Those studying justice issues, corrections, or capital punishment will find this an accessible and provocative work that places the stories read in novels or seen in movies in the context of the legal system that has the power of life and death.
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Executed on a Technicality : Lethal Injustice on America's Death Row: David R. Dow
When David Dow took his first capital case, he supported the death penalty. He changed his position as the men on death row became real people to him, as he came to witness the profound injustices they endured: from coerced confessions to disconcertingly incompetent lawyers; from racist juries and backward judges to a highly arbitrary death penalty system.
Dow"s eye-opening book is captivating because he allows the men, and their cases, to speak for themselves. For instance, one inmate"s lawyer literally slept through his trial; another inmate was executed because the jury never heard from two eyewitnesses who swore he was no the murderer; and yet another inmate was allowed to represent himself at trial despite the fact that his mental imbalance, which included attempts to issue a subpoena to Jesus Christ, was evident.
It is these concrete accounts of the people Dow has known and represented that prove the death penalty is consistently unjust, and it"s precisely this fundamental—and lethal—injustice, Dow argues, that should compel us to abandon the system altogether.
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An Execution in the Family: One Son's Journey: Robert Meeropol
Robert Meeropol was six years old in 1953 when his parents, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, were executed after being convicted of Conspiracy to Commit Espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union at the height of the McCarthy era. Just before they were put to death, the Rosenbergs wrote a letter to their two sons saying they were “secure in the knowledge that others would carry on after them.”
The Rosenbergs left their young sons a legacy that was both a burden and a gift, as well as an aching emotional void. Robert Meeropol grew up torn between the need to pursue his political values and his intense fear that personal exposure might subject him and his family to violence or even death.
An Execution in the Family details Robert Meeropol’s political odyssey from being the Rosenbergs’son to becoming a prominent political activist in his own right, and it chronicles a very personal journey of self-discovery. This is the story of how he tried to balance a strong desire to live a normal life and raise a family with a growing need to create something useful out of his childhood nightmare. It is also a poignant account of how, at age forty-three, he finally found a way to honor his parents and be true to himself
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