From Lynch Mobs to the Killing State: Race and the Death Penalty in America

by Charles J. Ogletree Jr., Austin Sarat

Overview

Situates the linkage between race and the death penalty in the history of the U.S.

Since 1976, over forty percent of prisoners executed in American jails have been African American or Hispanic. This trend shows little evidence of diminishing, and follows a larger pattern of the violent criminalization of African American populations that has marked the country's history of punishment.

In a bold attempt to tackle the looming question of how and why the connection between race and the death penalty has been so strong throughout American history, Ogletree and Sarat headline an interdisciplinary cast of experts in reflecting on this disturbing issue. Insightful original essays approach the topic from legal, historical, cultural, and social science perspectives to show the ways that the death penalty is racialized, the places in the death penalty process where race makes a difference, and the ways that meanings of race in the United States are constructed in and through our practices of capital punishment.

From Lynch Mobs to the Killing State not only uncovers the ways that race influences capital punishment, but also attempts to situate the linkage between race and the death penalty in the history of this country, in particular the history of lynching. In its probing examination of how and why the connection between race and the death penalty has been so strong throughout American history, this book forces us to consider how the death penalty gives meaning to race as well as why the racialization of the death penalty is uniquely American.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814740217
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	05/01/2006
Series:	The Charles Hamilton Houston Institute Series on Race and Justice , #6
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 9.00(d)

About the Author

Charles J. Ogletree, Jr. (Editor)
Charles J. Ogletree, Jr. is the Jesse Climenko Professor of Law and Executive Director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School. He is the author of All Deliberate Speed: Reflections on the First Half-Century of Brown v. Board of Education (WW Norton and Company, 2004) and Co-Author of From Lynch Mobs to the Killing State: Race and the Death Penalty in America.

Austin Sarat (Editor)
Austin Sarat is William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts. He has written or edited dozens of books, including Lethal Injection and the False Promise of Humane Execution (Stanford 2022), Law's Infamy: Understanding the Canon of Bad Law (NYU 2021), and Cause Lawyering and the State in a Global Era (Oxford 2001), which won the 2004 Reginald Heber Smith Book Award.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Charles J. Ogletree, Jr., and Austin Sarat
Part I : The Meaning and Significance of Race in the Culture of Capital Punishment
1 Capital Punishment as Legal Lynching?
Timothy V. Kaufman-Osborn
2 Making Race Matter in Death Matters
Charles J. Ogletree, Jr.
3 Traces of Slavery: Race and the Death Penalty in Historical Perspective
Stuart Banner
Part II : Race and the Death Penalty Process
4 The Role of Victim’s Race and Geography on Death Sentencing: Some Recent Data from Illinois
Michael L. Radelet and Glenn L. Pierce
5 Death in “Whiteface”: Modern Race Minstrels, Official Lynching, and the Culture of American Apartheid
Benjamin Fleury-Steiner
6 Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Life-and-Death
Decision Making: Lessons from Laypersons in an Experimental Setting
Mona Lynch
Part III : Race, Politics, and the Death Penalty
7 Discrimination, Death, and Denial: The Tolerance of Racial Discrimination in Infliction of the Death Penalty
Stephen B. Bright
8 The Rhetoric of Race in the “New Abolitionism”
Austin Sarat
Contributors
Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Expertly dissects the racist underpinnings of capital punishment while pushing some intellectual boundaries.”
-International Socialist Review

,

“The authors give the nation an unflinching view of the shameful influence of racism in death penalty cases. This is a must read for anyone who cares about fairness in application of the death penalty and respect for the rule of law in our modern society.”
-Senator Edward M. Kennedy

,

“Ogeltree and Sarat combine the most severe criminal punishment with the bugaboo of racial class and prejudice in their book From Lynch Mobs to the Killing State. The professors astutely note that the death penalty is often used as a club to keep poor and desperate minorities in line in the larger white society.”
-Black Issues Book Review

,

“Professors Charles Ogletree and Austin Sarat gather an impressive lineup between racial politics in America and the killing of African-Americans.”
-Harvard Law Review

,

“An elegant compendium of essays written by sociologists, historians, criminologists, and lawyers. The essays starkly reveal how this country's death penalty has its roots in lynchings, and how it operates to sustain a racist agenda.”
-The Federal Lawyer

Editorial Reviews

"The authors give the nation an unflinching view of the shameful influence of racism in death penalty cases. This is a must read for anyone who cares about fairness in application of the death penalty and respect for the rule of law in our modern society."

Senator Edward M. Kennedy

"Ogeltree and Sarat combine the most severe criminal punishment with the bugaboo of racial class and prejudice in their book From Lynch Mobs to the Killing State. The professors astutely note that the death penalty is often used as a club to keep poor and desperate minorities in line in the larger white society."

Black Issues Book Review

"Expertly dissects the racist underpinnings of capital punishment while pushing some intellectual boundaries."

International Socialist Review

"Professors Charles Ogletree and Austin Sarat gather an impressive lineup between racial politics in America and the killing of African-Americans."

Harvard Law Review

"An elegant compendium of essays written by sociologists, historians, criminologists, and lawyers. The essays starkly reveal how this country’s death penalty has its roots in lynchings, and how it operates to sustain a racist agenda."

The Federal Lawyer

An elegant compendium of essays written by sociologists, historians, criminologists, and lawyers. The essays starkly reveal how this country’s death penalty has its roots in lynchings, and how it operates to sustain a racist agenda.”
• The Federal Lawyer

“The authors give the nation an unflinching view of the shameful influence of racism in death penalty cases. This is a must read for anyone who cares about fairness in application of the death penalty and respect for the rule of law in our modern society.”
-Senator Edward M. Kennedy

From the Publisher