Capital Punishment
Updated:
The Great Prevaricator by
Lona Manning.
(Updated 05/29/07)
Edgar Smith,
with William F. Buckley Jr. blithely playing his stooge, wrote his way to
freedom from the Death House in Trenton State Prison in 1971, becoming the most
famous death-row prisoner of his time. Fourteen and-a-half years earlier, Smith
-- at age 23 -- had bludgeoned to death 15-year-old Vickie Zielinski in Mahwah,
N.J. Less than five years after his release from prison, Smith kidnapped a
petite but scrappy young mother who miraculously managed to escape from Smith's
car with a knife stuck in her side.
Volunteering
for Death: The Fast Track to the Death House by Robert Anthony Phillips.
Death-row inmates are increasingly foregoing the appeal process to hasten the
date of their execution. "Volunteers" now account for more than one of
every eight executions.
The Death Penalty is an overview of the
death penalty in this century -- with the leading arguments for and against capital
punishment, and some of the leading cases that have motivated the public. Written
by J.J. Maloney.
Death Row Trivia, by Bonnie Bobit, explores some of the unusual and even humorous facts
attending capital punishment.
Updated: The
Execution Photos.
(Updated
6/20/07)
When the Florida Supreme Court ruled that the electric chair
was a constitutional form of execution, an outraged justice of the court
attached three photographs to his dissent. The photographs show the
agonized and contorted face of a recently executed Florida prisoner, his
shirt-front drenched in blood. It is said a photograph is worth 1,000 words.
Some are worth more. Be forewarned that photograph #3
is particularly gruesome.
An Evening With Tony
is the compelling
story of the night Lloyd Lee Anderson went to the gas chamber in Missouri -- and of Tony
Bonino, an old-time gangster who beat the hangman's noose. You decide who suffered
the worse fate. Written by J.J. Maloney.
