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English
Description
In this vivid account of how his views on the death penalty have evolved, Turow describes his own experiences with capital punishment from his days as an impassioned young prosecutor to his recent service on the Illinois commission which investigated the administration of the death penalty and influenced Governor George Ryan's unprecedented commutation of the sentences of 164 death row inmates on his last day in office.
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Marc Mauer and Ashley Nellis of The Sentencing Project argue that there is no practical or moral justification for a sentence longer than twenty years. Harsher sentences have been shown to have little effect on crime rates, since people "age out" of crime--meaning that we're spending a fortune on geriatric care for older prisoners who pose little threat to public safety. Extreme punishment for serious crime also has an inflationary effect on sentences...
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"...another winner that thriller, mystery and general fiction readers alike will relish." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Arvin weaves together disparate elements into a coherent and often thought-provoking tale." - Pittsburgh Tribune
"Intriguing...clever. A-" - Entertainment Weekly
"A suspenseful story line that takes hold of the reader from the very beginning to the book's close." - New York Law Journal
"(BLOOD OF ANGELS is) the kind of...
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Description
Billy Wayne Sinclair was only 21 when he heard the Louisiana judge pronounce these words: "I hereby sentence you to death in the electric chair." It was the culmination of a botched holdup committed the year before in which Billy had accidentally shot and killed a man. Billy spent the next 40 years in Angola Prison, one of the country's worst, six of those years on death row. When in 1972 the Supreme Court struck down the death penalty as arbitrary...
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"Beyond These Walls is an ambitious and far-ranging exploration that tracks the legacy of crime and imprisonment in the United States, from the historical roots of the American criminal justice system to our modern state of over-incarceration, and offers a bold vision for a new future. Author Tony Platt, a recognized authority in the field of criminal justice, challenges the way we think about how and why millions of people are tracked, arrested,...
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After a CIA covert mission goes badly awry, U.S. Air Force intelligence officer Nicholas Flynn is exiled to guard a remote radar post along Alaska's Arctic frontier. This dead-end assignment is designed to put his career permanently on ice, but Flynn's not the type to fade quietly into obscurity...
As winter storms pound Alaska and northern Canada, Russian aircraft begin penetrating deep into friendly airspace. Are these rehearsals for a possible...
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The last meals of death row convicts fascinate us because they offer an insight into a disturbed mind shortly before its owner's death. The last meal is a way for the system to offer a last-minute nod to humanity--that although these murderers, rapists, and villains listed inside may have performed inhuman acts, they are still indeed human.
The irony of feeding a criminal before killing them by electrocution or lethal injection is not missed...
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A gripping exploration of a jury's members' perspectives on the most wrenching decision: the death sentence
With a life in the balance, a jury convicts a man of murder and now has to decide whether he should be put to death. Twelve people now face a momentous choice.
Bringing drama to life, A Life and Death Decision gives unique insight into how a jury deliberates. We feel the passions, anger, and despair as the jurors grapple with legal, moral,...
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In 1919, Lewis E. Lawes moved his wife and young daughters into the warden's mansion at Sing Sing prison. They shared a yard with 1,096 of the toughest inmates in the world-murderers, rapists, and thieves who Lawes alone believed capable of redemption. Adamantly opposed to the death penalty, Lawes presided over 300 executions. His progressive ideas shocked many, but he taught the nation that a prison was a community. He allowed a kidnapper to care...
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How long did the guillotine's blade hang over the heads of French criminals? Was it abandoned in the late 1800s? Did French citizens of the early days of the twentieth century decry its brutality? No. The blade was allowed to do its work well into our own time. In 1974, Hamida Djandoubi brutally tortured 22 year-old Elisabeth Bousquet in an apartment in Marseille, putting cigarettes out on her body and lighting her on fire, finally strangling her...
12) An everyday hero
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Series
Heart of a hero novels volume 2
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English
Description
"From Laura Trentham, the award-winning author of The Military Wife, comes An Everyday Hero--an emotionally layered novel about loss, second chances, and what it means to be a true hero"--
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For twelve years Robert Blecker, a criminal law professor, wandered freely inside Lorton Central Prison, armed only with cigarettes and a tape recorder. The Death of Punishment tests legal philosophy against the reality and wisdom of street criminals and their guards. Some killers' poignant circumstances should lead us to mercy; others show clearly why they should die. After thousands of hours over twenty-five years inside maximum security prisons...
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In the post-civil war American south, the despicable act of lynching was commonplace and considered to be a form of vigilantism that was used to murder African Americans for alleged "crimes" ranging from acting suspiciously to "insulting whites". In Wells' 1892 book "Southern Horrors - Lynch Law in All its Phases", Ida Bell Wells-Barnett describes many horrific instances when the law turned a blind eye to the barbaric practice of lynching, in an attempt...
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In the post-civil war American south, the despicable act of lynching was commonplace and considered to be a form of vigilantism that was used to murder African Americans for alleged "crimes" ranging from acting suspiciously to "insulting whites". In "The Red Record", Ida Bell Wells-Barnett records statistics concerning instances of lynching and offers vivid descriptions of the extrajudicial killings in an attempt to galvanise the public into action...
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Drawing from legal and extralegal discourse but focusing on imaginative literature, Literary Executions examines representations of, responses to, and arguments for and against the death penalty in the United States over the long nineteenth century. John Cyril Barton creates a generative dialogue between artistic relics and legal history. He looks to novels, short stories, poems, and creative nonfiction as well as legislative reports, trial transcripts,...
17) Lilith: a novel
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A triumphantly feminist retelling of ancient creation myths in the tradition of Madeline Miller and Claire North. Lyrically rendered, this epic U.S. debut tells the story of the woman known as Adam's first wife and her fall from Paradise and quest for revenge. Before Eve, there was Lilith. Lilith and Adam are equal and happy in the Garden of Eden. Until Adam decides Lilith should submit to his will and lie beneath him. She refuses-and is banished...
18) Hell: a guide
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English
Description
Anthony DeStefano, the bestselling author of A Travel Guide to Heaven, takes us on an exploration of hell, the devil, demons, and evil itself. Written with clarity, logic, and vivid storytelling, Hell: A Guide takes up questions such as:
• Is hell a place or a state of being?
• What does hell look like?
• What kind of suffering do people in hell experience?
• What are the devil and demons really like?
Rooted in solid, orthodox Christian scholarship,...
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Description
With Whigs and Hunters, the author of The Making of the English Working Class, E. P. Thompson plunged into the murky waters of the early eighteenth century to chart the violently conflicting currents that boiled beneath the apparent calm of the time. The subject is the Black Act, a law of unprecedented savagery passed by Parliament in 1723 to deal with 'wicked and evil-disposed men going armed in disguise'. These men were pillaging the royal forest...
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Description
"My Experiences as an Executioner" is a 1892 memoir by English executioner James Berry (1852–1913). Berry was most notable for his contribution to the science of hanging, refining the long drop method developed by William Marwood so as to reduce the mental and physical suffering of those hanged. In this volume, Berry offers insights into the various methods he employed as an executioner and what it was like witnessing people's final moments. Contents...
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