@article{800648,
      recid = {800648},
      author = {Garrett, Brandon,},
      title = {End of its rope : how killing the death penalty can revive  criminal justice /},
      pages = {1 online resource (331 pages)},
      abstract = {"When Henry McCollum was condemned to death in 1983 in  rural North Carolina, death sentences were commonplace. In  2015, DNA tests set McCollum free. By then, death sentences  were as rare as lightning strikes. To most observers this  national trend came as a surprise. What changed? Brandon  Garrett hand-collected and analyzed national data, looking  for causes and implications of this turnaround. End of Its  Rope explains what he found, and why the death penalty's  demise can be the catalyst for criminal justice reform. No  single factor put the death penalty on the road to  extinction, Garrett concludes. Death row exonerations  fostered rising awareness of errors in death penalty cases,  at the same time that a decline in murder rates eroded  law-and-order arguments. Defense lawyers radically improved  how they litigate death cases when given adequate  resources. More troubling, many states replaced the death  penalty with what amounts to a virtual death sentence--life  without possibility of parole. Today, the death penalty  hangs on in a few scattered counties where prosecutors  cling to entrenched habits and patterns of racial bias. We  can celebrate the death penalty's demise, and we can learn  from it. The failed death penalty experiment teaches us how  inept lawyering, overzealous prosecution, race  discrimination, wrongful convictions, and excessive  punishments undermine the pursuit of justice. Garrett makes  a strong closing case for what a future criminal justice  system might look like if these injustices were  remedied"--},
      url = {http://library.usi.edu/record/800648},
}