Random House
Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions
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Title: Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions
Author: Prejean, Helen
ISBN: 9780679440567
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2004
Binding: Hardcover
Language: English
Condition: Used: Very Good
Clean, unmarked copy with some edge wear. Good binding. Dust jacket included if issued with one. We ship in recyclable American-made mailers. 100% money-back guarantee on all orders.
Non-Fiction 1404256
Publisher Description:
Sister Helen Prejean was a little-known Roman Catholic nun from Louisiana when""in 1993, her first book "Dead Man Walking, "challenged the way we look at the death penalty in America. It became a #1" New York Times" bestseller and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Now in "The Death of Innocents, "she takes us to the new moral edge of the debate on capital punishment: What if we're killing the wrong man?
Dobie Gillis Williams, an indigent black man from rural Louisiana with an IQ of 65, was accused of a brutal rape and murder. Williams's inept defense counsel, later disbarred for unethical practice for unrelated cases, allowed the prosecution's incredibly contrived scenario of the crime to go unchallenged. Less than two years after Williams's execution in January 1999, the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional to kill a man so mentally disabled.
In 1986, Joseph Roger O'Dell was convicted of murder in Virginia despite highly circumstantial evidence from a jailhouse snitch. For twelve years, O'Dell sought DNA testing on the forensic evidence, which he claimed would exonerate him, but the courts refused. After his execution on July 23, 1997, the state destroyed the evidence. As a result, its conviction of O'Dell could never be scrutinized.
"The reader of this book will be the first 'jury' with access to all the evidence the trial juries never saw," says Prejean, who accompanied both men to their executions. By using the withheld evidence to reconstruct the crimes for which these two men were convicted, Prejean shows how race, prosecutorial ambition, poverty, election cycles, and publicity play far too great a role in determining who dies and who lives.
Prejean traces the historical underpinnings of executions in this country, demonstrating that it is no accident that over 80 percent of executions in the past twenty-five years have been carried out in the former slave states. She also raises profound constitutional questions about an appeals system
Author: Prejean, Helen
ISBN: 9780679440567
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2004
Binding: Hardcover
Language: English
Condition: Used: Very Good
Clean, unmarked copy with some edge wear. Good binding. Dust jacket included if issued with one. We ship in recyclable American-made mailers. 100% money-back guarantee on all orders.
Non-Fiction 1404256
Publisher Description:
Sister Helen Prejean was a little-known Roman Catholic nun from Louisiana when""in 1993, her first book "Dead Man Walking, "challenged the way we look at the death penalty in America. It became a #1" New York Times" bestseller and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Now in "The Death of Innocents, "she takes us to the new moral edge of the debate on capital punishment: What if we're killing the wrong man?
Dobie Gillis Williams, an indigent black man from rural Louisiana with an IQ of 65, was accused of a brutal rape and murder. Williams's inept defense counsel, later disbarred for unethical practice for unrelated cases, allowed the prosecution's incredibly contrived scenario of the crime to go unchallenged. Less than two years after Williams's execution in January 1999, the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional to kill a man so mentally disabled.
In 1986, Joseph Roger O'Dell was convicted of murder in Virginia despite highly circumstantial evidence from a jailhouse snitch. For twelve years, O'Dell sought DNA testing on the forensic evidence, which he claimed would exonerate him, but the courts refused. After his execution on July 23, 1997, the state destroyed the evidence. As a result, its conviction of O'Dell could never be scrutinized.
"The reader of this book will be the first 'jury' with access to all the evidence the trial juries never saw," says Prejean, who accompanied both men to their executions. By using the withheld evidence to reconstruct the crimes for which these two men were convicted, Prejean shows how race, prosecutorial ambition, poverty, election cycles, and publicity play far too great a role in determining who dies and who lives.
Prejean traces the historical underpinnings of executions in this country, demonstrating that it is no accident that over 80 percent of executions in the past twenty-five years have been carried out in the former slave states. She also raises profound constitutional questions about an appeals system
