A Saint on Death Row: The Story of Dominique Green – Thomas Cahill
Bestselling author Thomas Cahill has written a new book, A Saint on Death Row: The Story of Dominique Green, about his encounter and gradual understanding of the life of a Texas death row inmate named Dominique Green.
A Wild Justice: The Death and Resurrection of Capital Punishment in America – Evan J. Mandery
Drawing on never-before-published original source detail, the epic story of two of the most consequential, and largely forgotten, moments in Supreme Court history.
Bloodsworth: The True Story of the First Death Row Inmate Exonerated by DNA – Tim Junkin
Junkin recounts the events that led first to the conviction and death sentence, and then to the freeing of Kirk Bloodsworth for the murder of a nine-year-old girl in Maryland.
Capital Consequences: Families of the Condemned Tell Their Stories – Rachel King
King, of the ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project, focuses her book on the impact that the death penalty has on the families of those who have been condemned to die.
Chasing justice – Kerry Max Cook
Kerry Cook is an innocent man who wrongly served two decades in Texas’s notorious death house for the brutal 1977 rape and murder of 21-year-old Linda Jo Edwards. His struggle for freedom is said to be one of the worst cases of police and prosecutorial misconduct in American history.In the summer of 1977, Cook was staying in Tyler, TX. He met an attractive young woman named Linda Edwards.
End of Its Rope: How Killing the Death Penalty Can Revive Criminal Justice – Brandon L. Garrett
Brandon Garrett hand-collected and analyzed national data, looking for causes and implications of this turnaround. End of Its Rope explains what he found, and why the story of who killed the death penalty, and how, can be the catalyst for criminal justice reform.
Executed on a Technicality: Lethal Injustice on America’s Death Row – David 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, and 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.
Fighting for Their Lives: Inside the Experience of Capital Defense Attorneys – Susannah Sheffer
This book presents a carefully structured and nuanced exploration of the inner lives of attorneys practicing post conviction capital defense, mostly in a region called the Death Zone, the line of southern states between Florida and Texas where the death penalty is most often exacted.
Guilty by Reason of Insanity: A Psychiatrist Probes the Minds of Killers – Dorothy Otnow Lewis M.D.
Everyone has felt the urge to kill. Most people don’t kill. Some people do. Dorothy Otnow Lewis, a psychiatrist and an internationally recognized expert on violence, has spent the last quarter century studying the differences between those who do and those who don’t.
Infinite Hope: Anthony Graves
Written by a wrongfully convicted man who spent 16 years in solitary confinement and 12 years on Texas death row, a powerful memoir about fighting for–and winning–exoneration.
In the Belly of the Beast – Jack Henry Abbott
Born in Michigan in 1944, Jack Henry Abbott spent most of his childhood in foster care and his teen years in various detention centers. While serving a long sentence for killing a fellow inmate, he wrote to Norman Mailer and offered to write a truthful depiction of life in prison. Mailer agreed and with his help, Abbott published In the Belly of the Beast. Abbott died in prison in 2002.
Kiss of Death: America’s Love Affair with the Death Penalty by John Bessler
Attorney John Bessler presents arguments against capital punishment based on his work as a pro bono attorney for death row inmates in Texas.
Murder at the Supreme Court – Martin Clancy & Tim O’Brien
This in-depth yet highly accessible book provides compelling human stories that illuminate the thorny legal issues behind the most noteworthy capital cases.
The Executioner’s Song – Norman Mailer
The Executioner’s Song is a work of unprecedented force. It is the true story of Gary Gilmore, who in 1977 became the first person executed in the United States since the reinstitution of the death penalty.
The Rope, the Chair, & the Needle: Capital Punishment in Texas, 1923-1990 – Sheldon Ekland-Olson, Jonathan R. Sorensen & James W. Marquart
This book is the single most comprehensive examination to date of capital punishment in any one state, drawing on data for legal executions from 1819 to 1990. The authors show persuasively how slavery and the racially biased practice of lynching in Texas led to the institutionalization and public approval of executions skewed according to race, class, and gender, and they also track long-term changes in public opinion up to the present.
Waiting to Die: Life on Death Row – Richard M. Rossi
Provides a first-hand account of his daily life on Arizona’s death row. Rossi was sentenced to death in 1983 and has taken responsibility for the murder he committed.
Warrior Within: Inside Report on Texas Death Row – Charles D. Flores
The book, Warrior Within: Inside Report on Texas Death Row, provides a first-hand account of Flores’ death penalty trial and his experiences awaiting execution.
White Lies: True Story of Clarence Bradley – Presumed Guilty in the American South – Nick Davies
English journalist Davies tells a tale of Texan injustice: how a black janitor was convicted of raping and murdering a white cheerleader, only to be vindicated 10 years later. An exceptional book and a compelling example of the flawed death penalty system.
Within These Walls: Memoirs of a Death House Chaplain by Rev. Carroll Pickett
Pickett recalls his 15 years as chaplain to death row inmates in Huntsville, Texas, and provides an account of ministering to 95 men in their final hours before execution.
Writing for their lives, Death Row USA – Marie Mulvey-Roberts
Going well beyond graphic descriptions of death row’s madness and suicide-inducing realities, Writing For Their Lives offers powerful, compassionate, and harrowing accounts of prisoners rediscovering the value of life from within the brutality and boredom of the row.