Death Watch: A Death Penalty Anthology

By Lane Nelson and Burk Foster

From the cover: Death Watch Is a topical, up-to-date collection of death penalty journalism and personal essays. Drawing on the experiences and perspectives of Lane Nelson, a former death row inmate and current staff writer for "The Angolite," Louisiana's award winning prison news magazine, and Burk Foster, a University of Louisiana-Lafayette criminal justice professor and jail and prison expert witness, Death Watch looks at the death penalty as a legal process, a social reality, and a fundamental issue of public policy. The topics covered in this volume include: ♦  how capital cases are different in the legal process ♦  how death penalty offenders are selected ♦  the selective application of the death penalty to women and juveniles ♦  problems in providing competent counsel to death penalty defendants ♦  medical issues related to organ donation and physician participation in executions ♦  the execution of blacks for rape in the South ♦  how the death penalty was imposed and carried out in the past ♦  reflections on death row life by inmates under death sentence ♦  the last words of men and women before execution ♦  the dilemma of defending the innocent on death row ♦  feature articles on two Louisiana inmates, Antonio James and John A. Brown, Jr., executed in 1996 and 1997. ♦  the ethics of the death penalty today.

Upper Saddle River New Jersey. Prentice Hall. 2001. 307p.