Is capital punishment just? Does it deter people from murder? What is
the risk that we will execute innocent people? These are the usual
questions at the heart of the increasingly heated debate about capital
punishment in America. In this bold and impassioned book, Austin Sarat
seeks to change the terms of that debate. Capital punishment must be
stopped, Sarat argues, because it undermines our democratic society.
Sarat unflinchingly exposes us to the realities of state killing. He
examines its foundations in ideas about revenge and retribution. He
takes us inside the courtroom of a capital trial, interviews jurors and
lawyers who make decisions about life and death, and assesses the
arguments swirling around Timothy McVeigh and his trial for the bombing
in Oklahoma City. Aided by a series of unsettling color photographs, he
traces Americans' evolving quest for new methods of execution, and
explores the place of capital punishment in popular culture by examining
such films as Dead Man Walking, The Last Dance, and The Green Mile.
Sarat argues that state executions, once used by monarchs as symbolic
displays of power, gained acceptance among Americans as a sign of the
people's sovereignty. Yet today when the state kills, it does so in a
bureaucratic procedure hidden from view and for which no one in
particular takes responsibility. He uncovers the forces that sustain
America's killing culture, including overheated political rhetoric,
racial prejudice, and the desire for a world without moral ambiguity.
Capital punishment, Sarat shows, ultimately leaves Americans more
divided, hostile, indifferent to life's complexities, and much further
from solving the nation's ills. In short, it leaves us with an
impoverished democracy.
The book's powerful and sobering conclusions point to a new abolitionist
politics, in which capital punishment should be banned not only on
ethical grounds but also for what it does to Americans and what we
cherish.
