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Those who support capital punishment often
claim that they do so because it provides justice and closure
for the victims' families. In Capital Consequences,
attorney Rachel King reminds us that there are other families
and other victims who are excluded from the death penalty
debate, and who should be considered.
Combining a narrative voice with vivid,
passionate, and painful accounts of the families of death
row inmates, the book describes how crimes that lead to death
sentences also devastate the families of those convicted.
These families, King argues, are the unseen victims of capital
punishment.
King challenges readers to question the
morality of a punishment that victimizes families of the condemned,
having a ripple effect, through future generations. She tells
the stories of families that have lost life savings supporting
an accused loved one, endured intense public scrutiny, been
subjected to harassment by the media, and are struggling to
live with the inhumane treatment that their loved ones receive
on death row. The author also explores the unique nature of
the grief that these families suffer. Because their pain tends
to attract less attention and empathy than that of the crime
victims' families, King shows how it becomes much more desperate
and isolating.
On a human level, this book is a powerful
reminder that tragic events have tragic consequences that
far outreach their immediate victims. At the same time, the
accounts illustrate many of the flaws inherent in the judicial
system-racial and economic bias, incompetent counsel, prosecutorial
misconduct, the execution of juveniles, and wrongful convictions,
some of which are only now being overturned as a result of
recent advances in DNA technology.
Regardless of which side of the death penalty
issue you are on, this book will lead you to pause and consider
that all acts-criminal and retributive-have broader human
implications than we are sometimes willing to realize.
Rachel King works for the Capital
Punishment Project of the American Civil Liberties Union.
She is the author of Don't Kill in Our Names: Families
of Murder Victims Speak Out Against the Death Penalty.
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