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Race and the Death Penalty: The Legacy of "McCleskey v. Kemp"

David P. Keys and R.J. Maratea, editors
Race and the Death Penalty: The Legacy of "McCleskey v. Kemp"
ISBN: 978-1-62637-356-3
$75.00
ISBN: 978-1-62637-513-0
$75.00
2016/219 pages/LC: 2015037573
"A book as well-indexed as it is well-cited, allowing the reader to easily drill-down into areas of interest."—Tim Lyman, Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Books

"Does a marvelous job of balancing the historical and contemporary narratives of how race and racism interact with the ongoing application of the death penalty.... Keys and Maratea have rejuvenated the dialogue."—Scott Wm. Bowman, Texas State University

DESCRIPTION

In what has been called the Dred Scott decision of our times, the US Supreme Court found in McCleskey v. Kemp that evidence of overwhelming racial disparities in the capital punishment process could not be admitted in individual capital cases—in effect institutionalizing a racially unequal system of criminal justice.

Exploring the enduring legacy of this radical decision nearly three decades later, the authors of Race and the Death Penalty examine the persistence of racial discrimination in the practice of capital punishment, the dynamics that drive it, and the human consequences of both.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David P. Keys is associate professor of criminal justice at New Mexico State University.  R.J. Maratea is research consultant with the Youth Research and Resource Center, Inc.

CONTENTS

  • Racial Bias and Capital Punishment—R.C. Dieter.
  • THE CRISIS OF RACE AND CAPITAL PUNISHMENT.
  • McCleskey v. Kemp and the Reaffirmation of Separate But Equal—D.P. Keys and R.J. Maratea.
  • Revisiting McCleskey v. Kemp: A Failure of Sociological Imagination?—T.G. Poveda.
  • McCleskey and the Lingering Problem of "Race"—R. Kleinstuber.
  • RACE, CLASS, AND CAPITAL SENTENCING.
  • Overcoming Moral Peril: How Empirical Research Can Affect Death Penalty Debates—R.J. Maratea.
  • Capital Sentencing and Structural Racism: The Source of Bias—G.F. Vito and G.E. Higgins.
  • Captial Case Processing in Georgia After McCleskey: More of the Same—J.G. Lee, R. Paternoster, and M. Rocque.
  • Addressing Contradictions with the Social Psychology of Capital Juries and Racial Bias—J.L. Flexon.
  • Nothing Succeeds Like Failure: Race, Decisionmaking, and Proportionality in Oklahoma Homicide Trials, 1973-2010—D.P. Keys and J. Galliher.
  • DEATH IN THE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE.
  • Do We Need the Death Penalty?—R.M. Bohm.
  • The Death Penalty's Dirty Little Secret—F.E. Zimring.
  • Race of Victim and US Capital Punishment—F.E. Zimring.