Executing Justice

This compelling book incisively analyzes every philosophical and humanitarian argument about the death penalty. It is a searching study of the ultimate invalidity of all the arguments advanced to justify the ultimate power of the state. The last chapter . . . is a powerful treatment of the reasons why Christianity must logically be opposed to the death penalty. No one is entitled to be heard in the fractious debate about the death penalty until that person has pondered the material discussed in this indispensable book. -- Robert F. Drinan, SJ, Professor of Law Georgetown University Law Center Lloyd Steffen has powerfully explored the moral reasoning of the death penalty. By utilizing the case of Willie Darden, he brings an abstract argument home on a personal level. Finally he poses what this means for those of us who are Christians. What will be your answer? This book provides an excellent consideration of all the available options. -- Rev. Joseph B. Ingle, Nobel Peace Prize nominee for his ministry to persons on death row We have, by now, a shelf of books that offer empirical, constitutional, or political discussions of the death penalty. What we don't have is a comprehensive, accessible, and persuasive evaluation of the death penalty in our society from the moral point of view. Thanks to Lloyd Steffen's new book, that need has been met. He enables us to see in patient detail just how difficult -- if he is right, how impossible -- it is to defend the death penalty on moral grounds. May his argument reach and persuade many! -- Hugo Adam Bedau, editor of The Death Penalty in America: Current Controversies There is no moral, legal, or ethical justification for the death penalty, and Executing Justice makes this abundantly clear. Steffen makes a compelling case that America can lift itself into the league of nations that long ago abandoned this barbaric practice. -- Morris Dees, cofounder and chief trial counsel of the Southern Poverty Law Center

Mumia Abu-Jamal's defense attorney provides an account of his client's struggle for justice as he describes the 1982 conviction of the award-winning journalist for the killing of a police officer.

In this reasoned exploration of justice, retribution, and redemption, the champion of the new monastic movement, popular speaker, and author of the bestselling The Irresistible Revolution offers a powerful and persuasive appeal for the abolition of the death penalty. The Bible says an eye for an eye. But is the state’s taking of a life true—or even practical—punishment for convicted prisoners? In this thought-provoking work, Shane Claiborne explores the issue of the death penalty and the contrast between punitive justice and restorative justice, questioning our notions of fairness, revenge, and absolution. Using an historical lens to frame his argument, Claiborne draws on testimonials and examples from Scripture to show how the death penalty is not the ideal of justice that many believe. Not only is a life lost, so too, is the possibility of mercy and grace. In Executing Grace, he reminds us of the divine power of forgiveness, and evokes the fundamental truth of the Gospel—that no one, even a criminal, is beyond redemption.

Mumia Abu-Jamal is an award-winning journalist and author of three well-received books and many essays. He is also a death-row inmate, awaiting execution in Pennsylvania for allegedly killing a police officer in 1981. For many around the world, he is an inspired leader and the centerpiece to a revived progressive movement critical of our justice system and escalating global economic inequities. For others, he is a cold-blooded killer who has duped millions, including a vast array of Hollywood celebrities, writers, intellectuals and world political leaders, into believing that he is a political prisoner falsely imprisoned. Whatever the outlook, he and his case have become a flashpoint in the ever-raging debate over capital punishment in this country and a symbol of what is wrong with our criminal justice system. Here, for the first time, the story of Mumia Abu-Jamal's trial and his struggle to gain his freedom has been told. Executing Justice takes us inside the courtroom where a fierce and skilled prosecutor wove a damning narrative of a young black radical who brutally murdered a young white police officer in the red-light district of Philadelphia, and then later boasted about the killing. It was, the prosecutor said, the strongest murder case he's ever tried. Daniel R. Williams, defense lawyer and chief legal strategist for Mumia Abu-Jamal, invites us to ask: why has this case engendered such enormous attention and aroused the passions of people worldwide? Executing Justice is the story of how the death penalty really works in this country—not from the perspective of appellate judges, academics, or politicians who pontificate about the pros and cons of capital punishment, but from ground zero, within the pit of the courtroom where the war over life and death is fought. It is also a story of one of the most remarkable trials in our history. Above all, Executing Justice is an honest, at times confessional, book that seeks not to preach, but to raise questions about what we expect from our legal system and the depth of our commitment to capital punishment as a form of executing justice.

Descriptors: laws, statutes.