Imprisoned by the Past

Jeffrey L. Kirchmeier is a Professor of Law at City University of New York School of Law. He received his B.A. and J.D. degrees from Case Western Reserve University. Before joining the CUNY Law faculty, he was an Associate at Arnold & Porter in Washington, D.C., and he taught at Tulane School of Law and Arizona State University College of Law. For several years, he was a staff attorney at the Arizona Capital Representation Project. Prof. Kirchmeier is a member and former Chair of the Capital Punishment Committee of the New York City Bar Association, and has appeared before a New York Assembly joint committee regarding the reinstatement of the New York death penalty. He is the author of numerous law review articles on the subject of criminal procedure, constitutional law, and the death penalty.

Preface to the Paperback Edition
Preface
Introduction
Part A - Prologue
Prologue: America's Marietta

Part B - A Killing in Georgia
Chapter 1: A Death in Dixie
Chapter 2: The Trial of Warren McCleskey
Chapter 3: Offie Evans and McCleskey v. Zant

Part C - American Death Penalty History And the Courts
Chapter 4: The First Limits: The Early American Death Penalty through the 1850s
Chapter 5: Wars and Death Penalty Abolition: The Civil War Through Early 1900s
Chapter 6: A Time of Change: American Society and the Death Penalty 1950s through the 1960s
Chapter 7: Into the Courthouse: The 1970s Abolition Strategy
Chapter 8: A New Era: A New U.S. Death Penalty Returns in the Late 1970s
Chapter 9: Starting Over: Executions Resume in the 1970s and 1980s

Part D - Lynching, Race, and McCleskey v. Kemp
Chapter 10: Lynching and Race in America
Chapter 11: Race and the Courts
Chapter 12: Warren McCleskey and the Baldus Study
Chapter 13: The Supreme Court and McCleskey v Kemp

Part E - Execution
Chapter 14: Mitigation and Reform
Chapter 15: Warren McCleskey & the Electric Chair
Chapter 16: Other American Execution Methods

Part F - The Capital Punishment Debate Moves Outside the Courts after McCleskey
Chapter 17: The Unstoppable Death Penalty After McCleskey into the early 1990s
Chapter 18: New Abolitionist Voices in the 1990s
Chapter 19: Innocence and the American Death Penalty
Chapter 20: A Moratorium Movement Emerges in the 1990s

Part G - McCleskey's Legacy in the Early Twenty-First Century
Chapter 21: The Early Twenty-First Century Death Penalty in the Courts
Chapter 22: The Early Twenty-First Century Death Penalty in U.S. Politics
Chapter 23: Escaping from Imprisonment of the Past

Part H - Epilogue
Epilogue: Warren McCleskey's Case and the American Death Penalty Today