Introduction

Abstract

The origins of this book date to the mid-1990s, when I worked for the Texas Defender Service, a small private non-profit law firm which represented Texas death row inmates in their appeals. Representing death row inmates is vital work, not least because it regularly can and does save human lives. But most of those who do this work have an ulterior motive: they believe it will hasten the end of capital punishment in the United States. American death penalty lawyers notched remarkable victories in the early 2000s: the Supreme Court outlawed capital punishment for those who were minors at the time of the crime (Roper v. Simmons, 2005), and for the mentally retarded (Atkins v. Virginia, 2002). But if these piecemeal victories contributed to the complete abolition of capital punishment, it was hard to see how. The death penalty still enjoyed the support of about 70% of the population, and — most importantly for the subject of this book — that fact was seen, in the United States at least, as convincing proof of its legitimacy.