000			03002cam a2200337Ii 4500
001			on1231555626
003			OCoLC
005			20210129133314.0
008			210115t20212021nyu e b 001 0 eng
010			_a 2020025171
040			_aNmSSL/DLC _beng _erda _cIEP _dIEP _dOCLCO _dJAS _dTCH _dNFG
020			_a9781524760267 _q(hardcover)
020			_a1524760269 _q(hardcover)
035			_a(OCoLC)1231555626
092			_a364.6609 _bC448
049			_aNFGA
100	1		_aChammah, Maurice, _eauthor.
245	1	0	_aLet the Lord sort them : _bthe rise and fall of the death penalty / _cMaurice Chammah.
250			_aFirst edition.
264		1	_aNew York : _bCrown, _c[2021]
264		4	_c©2021
300			_a354 pages ; _c25 cm
336			_atext _btxt _2rdacontent
337			_aunmediated _bn _2rdamedia
338			_avolume _bnc _2rdacarrier
504			_aIncludes bibliographical references and index.
520			_a"A deeply reported, searingly honest portrait of the death penalty in Texas--and what it tells us about crime and punishment in America. In 1972, the United States Supreme Court made a surprising ruling: the country's death penalty system violated the Constitution. The backlash was swift, especially in Texas, where executions were considered part of the cultural fabric, and a dark history of lynching was masked by gauzy visions of a tough-on-crime frontier. When executions resumed, Texas quickly became the nationwide leader in carrying out the punishment. Then, amid a larger wave of criminal justice reform, came the death penalty's decline, a trend so durable that even in Texas the punishment appears again close to extinction. In Let the Lord Sort Them, Maurice Chammah charts the rise and fall of capital punishment through the eyes of those it touched. We meet Elsa Alcala, the orphaned daughter of a Mexican American family who found her calling as a prosecutor in the nation's death penalty capital, before becoming a judge on the state's highest court. We meet Danalynn Recer, a lawyer who became obsessively devoted to unearthing the life stories of men who committed terrible crimes, and fought for mercy in courtrooms across the state. We meet death row prisoners--many of them once-famous figures like Henry Lee Lucas, Gary Graham, and Karla Faye Tucker--along with their families and the families of their victims. And we meet the executioners, who struggle openly with what society has asked them to do. In tracing these interconnected lives against the rise of mass incarceration in Texas and the country as a whole, Chammah explores what the persistence of the death penalty tells us about forgiveness and retribution, fairness and justice, history and myth. Written with intimacy and grace, Let the Lord Sort Them is the definitive portrait of a particularly American institution"-- _cProvided by publisher.
650		0	_aCapital punishment _zTexas _xHistory _y20th century.
651		0	_aTexas _xPolitics and government _y1951- _951600
994			_aC0 _bNFG
999			_c323627 _d323627