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Jurors' Stories of Death : How America's Death Penalty Invests in Inequality (Law, Meaning, and Violence)
Jurors' Stories of Death How America's Death Penalty Invests in Inequality - Law, Meaning, and Violence Author:Benjamin Dov Fleury-Steiner Jurors' Stories of Death is more than just another book about the death penalty; it is the first systematic survey of a rarely seen process -- how jurors make the life or death decision. — Benjamin Fleury-Steiner draws on the experiences of white and black jurors in capital punishment trials to discuss the effect of race on the sentencing process... more ». He finds that race is invariably a factor in sentencing, with jurors relying on narratives that deny defendants their individuality and complexity, while reinforcing the jurors' own identities as superior, moral, and law-abiding citizens. It is a system that punishes in the name of dominance. This "us-versus-them" approach continues to infuse rhetoric on crime and punishment in the U.S. even today. Jurors' Stories of Death concludes with an original argument for abolition of the death penalty: If America values multiculturalism and cultural diversity, it must do away with institutions such as state-sanctioned capital punishment in order to begin to free itself from the racism, classicism, sexism, and homophobia that so insidiously plague social relations today.
Benjamin Fleury-Steiner is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at the University of Delaware.« less