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Debating the Death Penalty: Should America Have Capital Punishment?: The Experts from Both Sides Make Their Best Case, edited by Hugo Adam Bedau and Paul G. Cassell. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. 242 pp. $26.00 cloth. ISBN: 0-19-516983-2. $13.95 paper. ISBN: 0-19-517980-3.
This anthology represents a portion of the ongoing American debate on capital punishment. The proponents include District Court Judge Paul Cassell, U.S. Circuit Court Appeals Judge Alexander Kozinski, County Prosecutor Joshua Marquis, and Louis Pojman, a philosophy professor at the U.S. Military Academy. The opponents include Tufts University Professor Hugo Adam Bedau, often seen as the dean of American death penalty researchers, as well as two defense attorneys, Stephen Bright and Bryan Stevenson, and former Illinois governor George Ryan. Governor Ryan was so appalled by the error and racism in the death penalty administration in his state that he pardoned four death row prisoners and commuted the death sentences of 163 others. Along with Governor Ryan, Bright, Stevenson, and Bedau beautifully chronicle the role of poverty, racism, and irrationality in current American death penalty practices.
Yet, most interesting...