Powerful, wry essays offering modern takes on a primitive practice,
from one of our most widely read death penalty abolitionists
As Ruth Bader Ginsburg has noted, people who are well represented at
trial rarely get the death penalty. But as Marc Bookman shows in a dozen
brilliant essays, the problems with capital punishment run far deeper
than just bad representation. Exploring prosecutorial misconduct, racist
judges and jurors, drunken lawyering, and executing the innocent and the
mentally ill, these essays demonstrate that precious few people on trial
for their lives get the fair trial the Constitution demands.
Today, death penalty cases continue to capture the hearts, minds, and
eblasts of progressives of all stripes--including the rich and famous
(see Kim Kardashian's advocacy)--but few people with firsthand knowledge
of America's "injustice system" have the literary chops to bring death
penalty stories to life.
Enter Marc Bookman. With a voice that is both literary and journalistic,
the veteran capital defense lawyer and seven-time Best American Essays
"notable" author exposes the dark absurdities and fatal inanities that
undermine the logic of the death penalty wherever it still exists. In
essays that cover seemingly "ordinary" capital cases over the last
thirty years, Bookman shows how violent crime brings out our worst human
instincts--revenge, fear, retribution, and prejudice. Combining these
emotions with the criminal legal system's weaknesses--purposely
ineffective, arbitrary, or widely infected with racism and misogyny--is
a recipe for injustice.
Bookman has been charming and educating readers in the pages of The
Atlantic, Mother Jones, and Slate for years. His wit and wisdom are
now collected and preserved in A Descending Spiral.
