Mario Marazziti

In the past decade 141 of the world's 192 countries have abolished or ceased to use capital punishment. Some have outlawed the death penalty for the first time; others, having outlawed it decades ago, have taken resolutions never to adopt it in the future. Meanwhile, NGOs, citizens' groups, progressive politicians, and church people have inspired a popular opposition to the death penalty, so that many American cities and states are now anti-death-penalty zones: not just Cambridge and Berkeley, but New Jersey, New Mexico and Michigan. The United States is the largest western nation where the death penalty is still in use, but the movement for abolition has taken place out of our view. Attention here has focused on technical questions: Is it legal? Color-blind? Cost-effective? A real deterrent to violent crime? Marazziti, an Italian, sheds light on the inhumanity of the death pealty in thirteen vivid, pointed episodes. They include a Swiftian tour of the Museum of Execution in Huntsville, Texas; the story of Dominique Green, a black man who was sentenced unfairly in Texas by an all-white jury, and made friends worldwide while on death row; conversations with exonerated prisoners and with family members of murdered people who stand against the death penalty despite their own loss; and an unforgettable profile of the prison warden who, after carrying out dozens of executions in Huntville, became convinced that the death penalty is an inhuman crime. It is time to imagine the United States without the death penalty, and this original and powerful book shows us how to do so.