| Description |
1 online resource (385 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates) : illustrations |
|
text file |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| Contents |
1. Terror, blood, and repentance -- 2. Hanging day -- 3. Degrees of death -- 4. Origins of opposition -- 5. Northern reform, southern retention -- 6. Into the jail yard -- 7. Technological cures -- 8. Decline -- 9. To the Supreme Court -- 10. Resurrection. |
| Summary |
A comprehensive account of the death penalty in the United States. Stuart Banner tells the story of dramatic changes, over four centuries, in the ways capital punishment has been administered and experienced. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, death was the standard penalty for a laundry list of crimes--from adultery to murder, from arson to horse- theft. Hangings were public events, staged before enormous audiences, attended by women and men, young and old, black and white. Early on, the gruesome spectacle was an explicitly religious event--replete with sermons, confessions, and last-minute penitence--to promote the salvation of both the condemned person and the spectators. Through the nineteenth century, in response to changing mores, execution became increasingly secular and private. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, as execution has become a quiet, sanitary, technological procedure, the death penalty is as divisive as ever. Re-creating what it was like to be the condemned prisoner, the executioner, and the eyewitness, Banner moves beyond the debates to give us an understanding of America's ultimate punishment. |
| Local Note |
eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America |
| Subject |
Capital punishment -- United States -- History.
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Capital punishment. |
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United States. |
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History. |
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Capital punishment -- Moral and ethical aspects -- United States.
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Capital punishment -- Moral and ethical aspects. |
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United States -- Social conditions.
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Social conditions. |
| Genre/Form |
Electronic books.
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History.
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Electronic books.
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| Other Form: |
Print version: Banner, Stuart, 1963- Death penalty. Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 2002 (DLC) 2001047047 (OCoLC)47658928 |
| ISBN |
9780674020511 (electronic book) |
|
0674020510 (electronic book) |
|
0674010833 |
|
9780674010833 |
|
0674007514 |
|
9780674007512 |
|
9780674010833 |
|
