"‘Wild Justice’ looks at death penalty debate," is Maurice Chammah's review for the Austin American-Statesman. Here's the beginning:
While crimes and trials have long made for good storytelling, and have sustained entire careers for writers of paperback true crime and fiction, the world of judges is rarely as compelling. In the Supreme Court, ideas — not stories — are the basis for decisions by old, formal figures, who make a habit of seeming austere. Often, the ideas they debate are so complex that it is difficult for the lay reader to grasp without tedious study.
This makes Evan Mandery’s new book,” A Wild Justice: The Death and Resurrection of Capital Punishment in America,” all the more impressive. He takes a series of Supreme Court cases from the early 1960s through the mid-1970s and shows how the NAACP Legal Defense Fund jumped on an early indication of opposition to the death penalty within the court and built a concerted legal assault against the practice. In 1972, they succeeded. The nation’s highest court halted all executions.
Then, in 1976, the court brought the punishment back, delivering a crushing defeat to death penalty opponents, and that action has lasted to this day.
It’s a naturally alluring story, and Mandery, a professor of criminal justice who has written three novels, shies away from the usual strategy of writers who examine the death penalty. It’s common to see long, gruesome scenes of both murder and executions, as writers impress upon their readers just how high the stakes are for the lawyers and judges who debate case law and constitutional interpretation.
Instead, Mandery gives us biographical sketches of nearly every justice, judge and lawyer who entered the debate professionally.
Earlier coverage of Evan Mandery's A Wild Justice begins at the link. Related posts are in the books category index.
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