A slender, forceful volume from Pulitzer-winning historian McFeely
(Grant, 1981; Sapelo's People, 1994) that examines the work of
Stephen Bright's Southern Center for Human Rights in defending the
indigent of Death Row against the state's killing apparatus.
McFeely encountered Bright when solicited for testimony in a
death-case appeal regarding the symbolic implications of the
Confederate flag's placement within the Georgia flag. Intrigued by
Bright's creativity in countermanding his clients' sentences, and
startled by his quasi-Gothic encounter with death penalty reality,
he's produced an analysis of this seemingly quixotic fight on
behalf of the condemned. Following Bright's maxim that even
murderers possess more humanity than their worst action indicates,
McFeely succeeds in both illuminating Bright's often scorned work
and portraying the penalty's effect on all those it ensnares,
including jurors, families of victims and perpetrators, and sundry
protesters. In keeping with his title, McFeely endeavors to discern
the life in the midst of the mainstreamed execution culture of the
southern "death belt." His findings are unsettling: for example,
the travails of a man whose 1977 death sentence is only commuted
via a 1991 Bright-helmed retrial subtly evoke the absurdly timeless
terror such inmates experience. Additionally, this historian
discerns without rhetorical overkill the deeply race- and
class-based inequities that have long compromised the application
of capital punishment. He explores how public enthusiasm for it
rises in times of war or domestic upheaval, and finds that
generally, its application is determined by such factors as local
outrage, political expedience, and initially poor legal
representation. Also within is a provocative, disturbing portrayal
of how determined southern legislators forced an end-run around the
Supreme Court's seemingly impermeable 1972 decision against capital
punishment. McFeely succeeds in paying tribute to the maverick
attorneys who pursue this unpopular, unremunerative work so vital
to constitutional interests. He succeeds equally in his
consideration of how this quintessentially American punishment
stabs at the souls of all citizens, not least those who regard it
as natural and just. (Kirkus Reviews)
On a misty September morning in rural Georgia, a Pulitzer
Prize-winning historian found himself cast in a role that he had
never imagined for himself: an expert witness in the sentencing
trial of a convicted kidnapper, rapist, and murderer. His brief
testimony that day would ultimately lead him on a personal journey
into the criminal justice system, to confront the actions and
decisions of lawyers battling for and against the death penalty,
convicts whose lives are at stake, and jurors forced to decide who
shall live and who shall die.
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