Why is the United States the only industrialized country in the world to persist with capital punishment? This updated edition of Capital Punishment: A Reference Handbook addresses this and other controversial questions. New features include sections on DNA and the Innocence Project, as well as special cases dealing with the mentally ill and incompetent, women, and children.
Michael Kronenwetter is a professional writer and the author of the first edition of ABC-CLIO's Encyclopedia of Twentieth Century American Social Issues.
In keeping with the publisher's ``Contemporary World Issues'' format, this handbook opens with an overview--practical, moral, and political--of capital punishment in the 1990s. This is followed by a chronology of important events, biographical sketches, lists of source material, a directory of organizations, statistics, and a bibliography. Overall, the quality of the book is uneven. The arguments for and against capital punishment are well constructed; the statistics, however, are skimpy and do not give more information than can be found in any almanac. Fifteen pages are devoted to a speech by Clarence Darrow, while the major death penalty decisions of the United States Supreme Court are merely listed on one page without any explanation of their provisions. The concentration throughout is on the U.S. justice system, yet there is no information on how death penalty legislation is enacted in the various states or how it can be repealed. Similar in scope to Stephen Flanders's Capital Punishment (Facts on File, 1991), this volume is an optional purchase.-- Frances Sandiford, Green Haven Correctional Facility Lib., Stormville, N.Y.
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