Death Penalty

When Scott Dozier was sent to Nevada’s death row in 2007, convicted of a pair of grisly murders, he didn’t cry foul or embark upon a protracted innocence campaign. He sought instead to expedite his execution—to hasten his inevitable death. He decided he would rather face his end swiftly than die slowly in solitary confinement. In volunteering for execution, Dozier may have been unusual. But in the tortuous events that led his death date to be scheduled and rescheduled, planned and then stayed, his time on death row was anything but.

Old Sparky covers the history of capital punishment in America and the "current wars" between Edison and Westinghouse, which led to the development of the electric chair. It examines how the electric chair became the most popular method of execution in America before being superseded by lethal injection. Famous executions are explored alongside quirky last meals and poignant last words.

The Fellowship of the Ring, the first volume in the trilogy, tells of the fateful power of the One Ring. It begins a magnificent tale of adventure that will plunge the members of the Fellowship of the Ring into a perilous quest and set the stage for the ultimate clash between the powers of good and evil.

On June 4, 2008, at approximately 5:30 p.m. in a quiet suburb of Phoenix, Arizona, Jodi Arias stabbed Travis Alexander 29 times, cut his throat, and then shot him in the head. The killer then went to great lengths to cover up the crime, including sending his grandmother flowers, going to the memorial service, driving by the victim's house, and calling the lead investigator, Detective Esteban Flores. It would take five years before the case would be put in front of a second jury and leave them to decide whether Arias was a cold, calculating killer.

In 1972, the United States Supreme Court made a surprising ruling: The country’s death penalty system violated the Constitution. The backlash was swift, especially in Texas, where executions were considered part of the cultural fabric, and a dark history of lynching was masked by gauzy visions of a tough-on-crime frontier. When executions resumed, Texas quickly became the nationwide leader in carrying out the punishment.

Dershowitz on Killing is a timely examination of issues and questions that are front and center in today’s society. Employing a philosophical, moral, religious, and cultural lens to the legal aspects surrounding death and life, Alan Dershowitz elucidates the role of government to determine who shall live and who shall die in declaring wars, ordering executions, authorizing deadly force, permitting or denying abortions, providing or mandating vaccines, controlling climate change, allowing or refusing asylum for endangered migrants, and other life and death rulings.

Following the jailhouse suicide of Vernon Butts, one of the main Freeway Killer defendants housed in the Los Angeles County Men's Central Jail, the LA Mental Health and Sheriff's Dept. was determined to keep other serial killers housed at the jail from a repeat event. Vonda Pelto, a newly minted psychologist, was selected for the task. Vonda’s assignment was not to council them in any way, it was to offer them an emotional sounding board and keep them on an even keel in order to get through their trails. From 1981 to 1985 she lived in the hall of mirrors world of serial killers and ...

In 1982, Sister Helen Prejean became the spiritual advisor to Patrick Sonnier, the convicted killer of two teenagers who was sentenced to die in the electric chair of Louisiana’s Angola State Prison. In the months before Sonnier’s death, the Roman Catholic nun came to know a man who was as terrified as he had once been terrifying. She also came to know the families of the victims and the men whose job it was to execute - men who often harbored doubts about the rightness of what they were doing.

In the summer of 1985, when she was fifteen, Eliza was kidnapped by Walter and held hostage for almost six weeks. He had killed at least one girl and Eliza always suspected he had other victims as well. Now on death row in Virginia for the rape and murder of his final victim, Walter seems to be making a heartfelt act of contrition as his execution nears. Though Eliza wants nothing to do with him, she's never forgotten that Walter was most unpredictable when ignored.

An acclaimed treatise on the history, philosophy and psychology of punishment. "...read with enormous appreciation for its erudition and method of analysis..." -- Michel Foucault.

Out debate your opponents by understanding all sides of the death penalty debate! Find out where you stand by learning in depth about the considerations behind having a death penalty as a matter of public policy.

American journalist, essayist, satirist, and cultural critic H.L. Mencken makes his 3-pronged case for the death penalty for those who take the lives of other people, challenging civilized order. Mencken argues the death penalty is a form of catharsis for the immediate victims of the crime, and is not solely for deterring other criminals, but also to give peace of mind to the society that has been wronged.

Five years ago Barbara Holloway gave up practicing law, disillusioned with a profession that put politics before justice. Then she receives a phone call, with a simple message: "I need you."

When a heart attack sends Penn's father, Tom Cage, to the ER, Tom begs that his son be brought to his side to hear a dying declaration. But when Penn arrives, Tom denies ever making the request - keeping his secrets for another day. The emergency hurls Penn back to a chilling case in Houston, where he worked in a DA's office known as the "death factory", which sent more killers to death row than any other in America.

Why was Laci Peterson murdered? When was Laci Peterson murdered? How exactly did Scott Peterson dump her body without anyone seeing him? Even after the landmark court case, the prosecution and the jury couldn’t say exactly what happened, when or how, so what did happen? Scott Peterson was convicted of first-degree, premeditated double murder. Trawling through the extended backstory of this fifteen year old case, the author finds obscure pieces to a familiar puzzle and contextualises all the available information: court records, interviews, media reports, police reports, evidence, court ...

Only the Kindle version of this book is available. The murder described in this book was the subject of an investigative report on the IDTV program, "On the Case With Paula Zahn" in April 2015. The author of this book was interviewed. On July 25, 1980, Anthony J. LaRette Jr. followed Mary Fleming into her apartment. He thought he had left the 18-year-old dead on the kitchen floor, but despite a gash across her throat and two deep knife wounds in her heart, she ran, naked and screaming, across the street to a neighbor's house, where she died on their front porch. Through solid journalism and...

Caliph Washington's life was never supposed to matter. As a Black teenager from the vice-ridden city of Bessemer, Alabama, Washington was wrongfully convicted of killing an Alabama policeman in 1957. Sentenced to death, he came within minutes of the electric chair - nearly a dozen times. A Kafka-esque legal odyssey in which Washington's original conviction was overturned three times before he was finally released in 1972, his story is the kind that pervades the history of American justice.

Set against the backdrop of China’s Cultural Revolution, a secret military project sends signals into space to establish contact with aliens. An alien civilization on the brink of destruction captures the signal and plans to invade Earth. Meanwhile, on Earth, different camps start forming, planning to either welcome the superior beings and help them take over a world seen as corrupt, or to fight against the invasion.

This is the Story of the Hanged ... criminal and political cases, the guilty and the wrongly accused. There are some incredible stories herein, badly conducted hangings, innocent men and women, miraculous survivals and horrific deaths. Writer Amanda Howard has uncovered a relatively unknown history, delving into case studies of individuals and entire communities, even, obsessed with hanging throughout the ages. The Story of the Hanged takes the reader on a journey throughout the history of hanging, detailing the evolution of what was once a common method of capital punishment from the ...

Macy Sorensen is settling into an ambitious if emotionally tepid routine: work hard as a new pediatrics resident, plan her wedding to an older, financially secure man, keep her head down and heart tucked away. But when she runs into Elliot Petropoulos - the first and only love of her life - the careful bubble she’s constructed begins to dissolve.