Let the Lord Sort Them: The Rise and Fall of the Death Penalty

Journalist Chammah debuts with a nuanced and deeply reported account of evolving attitudes toward the death penalty in America. Focusing on Texas, Chammah describes how pride in the state’s “frontier” brand of justice, coupled with a requirement that juries consider a defendant’s “future dangerousness” in capital cases, have led to more than 500 of the roughly 1,500 executions carried out in the U.S. since the 1970s taking place in Texas. He revisits headline-grabbing executions (Cameron Todd Willingham, Karla Faye Tucker, Gary Graham); reviews Supreme Court decisions prohibiting the death sentence for juveniles and the intellectually disabled; and discusses the history of “racially motivated lynchings.” The book weighs the human toll of the death penalty through profiles of defense lawyers, prosecutors, and judges; wardens, guards, and prison chaplains who oversee executions; death row inmates; and, to a lesser extent, the families of victims. Chammah complements his wide-angled perspective with deep dives into such specifics as the process of obtaining execution drugs, though readers may lose track of the many different cases and political and legislative battles he chronicles. Still, this is a thorough, finely written, and unflinching look at one of the most controversial aspects of the American justice system. (Jan.)