Book Review: America’s Death Penalty: Between Past and Present

• DOI: 10.1177/0734016811425610
• Date: 01 June 2012
• Author: J. C. Oleson
• Published date: 01 June 2012
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

Book Reviews

D. Garland, R. McGowen, and M. Meranze (Eds.).

America’s Death Penalty: Between Past and Present New York, NY: New York University Press, 2011. 256 pp.

$22.00. ISBN 978-0-8147-3267-0 (pbk.: alk. paper)

Reviewed by: J. C. Oleson, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

DOI: 10.1177/0734016811425610

For years, scholars have wrestled with the issue of American death penalty exceptionalism, asking

why the United States and Europe—which had seemed to follow such similar patterns of death pen-

alty utilization and reform for such a long period of time, diverged so dramatically during the 1970s.

Why, these scholars have asked, did the United States retain the use of the death penalty while

comparable European nations abandoned it? Germany conducted its last execution in 1948; Ireland,

in 1954; England, in 1969; and France, in 1977. Today, these nations (and the other nations in the

European Union) remain strictly abolitionist. Yet, while the United States appeared to follow

the same path to abolition when it struck down capital punishment in the 1972 case of Furman v.

Georgia (408 U.S. 238), it reinstated the death penalty just 4 years later with the Supreme Court’s

1976 decision of Gregg v. Georgia (428 U.S. 153). Why? Some have suggested the difference

between the United States (retentionist) and European (abolitionist) nations can be traced to the

federalist structure of the U.S. judiciary, to issues of race and racism, to our tradition of violence,

or to religious fundamentalism. The authors of America’s Death Penalty: Between Past and Present,

however, argue that the death penalty should not be understood in terms of a simple abolitionist/

retentionist dichotomy; rather, they claim, the history of the death penalty is a complex and nuanced

subject, and one about which we should endeavor to ask more sophisticated questions.

Published in 2011 by New York University Press, America’s Death Penalty is a collection of

seven interrelated essays, penned by six leading scholars on the topic of capital punishment. The first

of these essays, by historian Randall McGowan, is a well-written introduction that provides an

engaging background to the subject and clearly identifies the structure of the book. I have only one

criticism: While McGowan’s introduction contrasts the essays within America’s Death Penalty

against an ongoing death penalty debate that ‘‘casts a brilliant light upon a singular moment of pun-

ishment, treating it in stark isolation from other penal arrangements, and presenting it as a simple but

ominous choice for a society’’ (p. 20), there is little discussion of this other, external literature.

A survey of the literature on American death penalty exceptionalism, either as part of McGowan’s

introduction or as a stand-alone chapter, would be a useful addition for readers with limited exposure

to death penalty scholarship.

The first three of the remaining six essays adopt a general and long-range view of the death

penalty. Sociologist David Garland argues that around the world, the death penalty has followed

a distinct developmental pattern; transformed from a spectacular demonstration of state power, it

has declined in frequency of use as it became associated with penal (rather than state) power, and

eventually has been abolished. Historian Michael Meranze then draws upon the writings of Michel

Foucault, employing Foucault’s concept of the ‘‘biopolitical’’ to understand the rationalities at work

in capital punishment. Randall McGowan’s essay, ‘‘Through the Wrong End of the Telescope’’

Criminal Justice Review

37(2) 262-280

ª2012 Georgia State University

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