WHEN THE STATE KILLS: Capital Punishment and the American Condition

"[P]unishment in which citizens act in an official capacity to approve the deliberate killing of other citizens, contradicts and diminishes the respect for the worth or dignity of all persons that is the enlivening value of democratic politics," writes Sarat, professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College. He critiques the manner in which the United States, unlike other Western democracies, implements the death penalty from a number of perspectives. In his view, the relevant question is not whether an individual such as Timothy McVeigh "deserves" to die; rather, a democratic society must ask whether satisfying its urge for revenge—as opposed to retribution—is worth the social cost. In declaring the "victim's rights" movement misguided, he asks, why should it matter whether a victim was a homeless drifter or an upstanding citizen? Yet in our current system, these considerations do influence the penalty. Sarat also tackles less theoretical questions, decrying our search for more "humane" methods of execution and arguing that executions should be televised. For the most part, this series of essays is engaging and accessible to the nonacademic, although some familiarity with the writings of Michel Foucault would be helpful. Occasionally, however, Sarat's hostility toward the death penalty leads to overreaching. For example, without any substantiated support, Sarat leaps to the conclusion that the prosecutor (of a particular capital case in Georgia against a black man) hoped to vindicate the murdered white woman's "fallen innocence and to assert the value of white life against the devaluing acts of black men." Although not always convincing, this impassioned work raises a number of provocative questions about America's love affair with the death penalty. 17 color photos not seen by PW. (May 1)

Forecast: Like Michael Mello's The Wrong Man (Forecasts, Feb. 5), this will appeal primarily to anti–death penalty advocates.