Proximity to Death - Hardcover

McFeely, William S.

3.71

21 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393048195 ISBN 13: 9780393048193

Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc, 1999

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Looks at capital punishment in the United States today and at the courts, laws, lawyers, and convicts that form the battleground of the death penalty debate, focusing on the struggles of a group of Atlanta lawyers

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About the Author:

William McFeely is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography Grant, as well as Frederick Douglass, Sapelo's People, and Yankee Stepfather, all available in Norton paperback editions. He lives in Wellfleet, Massachusetts.

From Kirkus Reviews:

A slender, forceful volume from Pulitzer-winning historian McFeely (Grant, 1981; Sapelos People, 1994) that examines the work of Stephen Brights Southern Center for Human Rights in defending the indigent of Death Row against the states killing apparatus. McFeely encountered Bright when solicited for testimony in a death-case appeal regarding the symbolic implications of the Confederate flags placement within the Georgia flag. Intrigued by Brights creativity in countermanding his clients sentences, and startled by his quasi-Gothic encounter with death penalty reality, hes produced an analysis of this seemingly quixotic fight on behalf of the condemned. Following Brights maxim that even murderers possess more humanity than their worst action indicates, McFeely succeeds in both illuminating Brights often scorned work and portraying the penaltys effect on all those it ensnares, including jurors, families of victims and perpetrators, and sundry protesters. In keeping with his title, McFeely endeavors to discern the life in the midst of the mainstreamed execution culture of the southern death belt. His findings are unsettling: for example, the travails of a man whose 1977 death sentence is only commuted via a 1991 Bright-helmed retrial subtly evoke the absurdly timeless terror such inmates experience. Additionally, this historian discerns without rhetorical overkill the deeply race- and class-based inequities that have long compromised the application of capital punishment. He explores how public enthusiasm for it rises in times of war or domestic upheaval, and finds that generally, its application is determined by such factors as local outrage, political expedience, and initially poor legal representation. Also within is a provocative, disturbing portrayal of how determined southern legislators forced an end-run around the Supreme Courts seemingly impermeable 1972 decision against capital punishment. McFeely succeeds in paying tribute to the maverick attorneys who pursue this unpopular, unremunerative work so vital to constitutional interests. He succeeds equally in his consideration of how this quintessentially American punishment stabs at the souls of all citizens, not least those who regard it as natural and just. -- Copyright �1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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