6. Declaration of Howard Brodie, April 11, 1992, exhibit 8, vol. 1, Fierro v. Gomez. I deeply appreciate Mr. Brodie’s courtesy and cooperation in allowing me to reproduce one of his drawings in this book.
7. Declaration of Charles Raudenbaugh, April 15, 1992, exhibit 28, vol. 1, Fierro v. Gomez.
8. James W. L. Park, quoted in Gray and Stanley, Punishment in Search of a Crime, pp. 126–27.
9. “No. 77,” Time, June 9, 1967.
10. Gary P. Stiff II, “Executive Log,” Time, June 23, 1967.
11. Deborah W. Denno, “Getting to Death: Are Executions Constitutional?” Iowa Law Review 82 (1996–97): 321.
12. Weems v. United States, 217 U.S. 349 (1910).
13. Margaret J. Radin, “The Jurisprudence of Death: Evolving Standards for the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 126 (1978): 997.
14. Trop v. Dulles, 356 U.S. 86, 101 (1958).
15. Rudolph v. Alabama, 375 U.S. 889, 890, 891 (1963).
16. For a discussion of how the legal revolution affected prisoners and vice versa, see Scott Christianson, With Liberty for Some: 500 Years of Imprisonment in America (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998), pp. 252–58.
17. Chaplain Eshelman, in Gray and Stanley, Punishment in Search of a Crime, p. 153.
18. See Steven C. Tauber, “On Behalf of the Condemned? The Impact of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund on Capital Punishment Decision Making in the U.S. Courts of Appeals,” Political Research Quarterly 51(1) (1998): 191–219.
19. Maxwell v. Bishop, 385 U.S. 690 (1967); Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong, The Brethren: Inside the Supreme Court (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979), pp. 205–6, 210.
20. Anthony Amsterdam, quoted in “The Death Penalty: Cruel and Unusual?” Time, January 24, 1972. For an excellent profile of Amsterdam, see Nadya Labi, “A Man Against the Machine,” NYU Law School Magazine, Autumn 2007.
21. Michael Meltsner, Cruel and Unusuaclass="underline" The Supreme Court and Capital Punishment (New York: Random House, 1973), pp. 281–82.
22. Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972).
23. Ibid. (Brennan, J., with the majority).
24. Ibid. at 404 (Burger, C. J., dissenting).
25. For a follow-up study on what happened to the inmates who were resentenced, see James W. Marquart and Jonathan R. Sorensen, “A National Study of the Furman-Commuted Inmates: Assessing the Threat to Society from Capital Offenders,” Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 23(1) (November 1989): 5–28.
26. Franklin E. Zimring and Gordon Hawkins, “Capital Punishment and the Eighth Amendment: Furman and Gregg in Retrospect,” U.C. Davis Law Review 18(4) (Summer 1985): 927.
27. Bertram H. Wolfe. Pileup on Death Row (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1973), p. 384; Gottschalk, The Prison and the Gallows: The Politics of Mass Incarceration in America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 219.
28. 1973 R.I. Pub. Laws 280 § 1 (lethal gas). The 1973 law made the death penalty mandatory for anyone who committed murder while confined in an adult correctional institution or state reformatory for women.
29. “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They,” Time, October 8, 1973.
30. Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153, 168–69 (1976).
31. Ibid., at 186–87.
32. See Norman Mailer, The Executioner’s Song (New York: Warner Books, 1980), a masterpiece about the place of Gilmore’s execution in American culture.
33. Gottschalk, Prison and the Gallows, pp. 224–25.
34. For a study of the constitutionality of various execution methods and the rise of lethal injection, see Denno, “Getting to Death”; and “When Legislatures Delegate Death: The Troubling Paradox Behind State Uses of Electrocution and Lethal Injection and What It Says about Us,” Ohio State Law Journal 63(1) (2002): 63–260. Also see the following early articles about lethal injection: Scott Christianson, “Needle Executions: The ‘Civilized’ Way to Kill,” Pacific News Service, September 26, 1977; “This Won’t Hurt a Bit,” Mother Jones, January 1978, p. 6; “Execution by Lethal Injection,” Criminal Law Bulletin, January–February 1979, pp. 69–78; and “Killing with Kindness,” Playboy, April 1979, p. 65.
35. Reverend Clyde Johnston, quoted in Austin American-Statesman, June 12, 1977.
11. “CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT”?
1. Schwarzschild, in Ian Gray and Moira Stanley, A Punishment in Search of a Crime: Americans Speak Out Against the Death Penalty (New York: Avon Books, 1989), 291–98.
2. See David von Drehle, Among the Lowest of the Dead: The Culture of Death Row (New York: Times Books, 1995).
3. Ann Salisbury, “‘I’m Not Afraid. I’m Jesse Bishop,’” LAHE, August 23, 1979; Associated Press, “Prison Psychiatrist Counsels Patients at a Gas Chamber,” NYT, May 11, 1978.
4. Wallace Turner, “Murderer in Casino Executed in Nevada,” NYT, October 23, 1979.
5. Declaration of Tad Dunbar, exhibit 14, vol. 1, Fierro v. Gomez.
6. Gray v. Lucas, 463 U.S. 1237 (1983).
7. Quoted in James Gomez and Daniel Vasquez v. United States District Court for the Northern District of California et al., “On Application to Vacate Stay” (April 21, 1992), Supreme Court of the United States (Docket No. A-767), Justices Stevens and Blackmun dissenting.
8. E. R. Shipp, “Killer of 3-Year-Old Mississippi Girl Executed after Justices Reject Plea,” NYT, September 3, 1983; Associated Press, “Father Says Execution Won’t Erase His Memories,” NYT, September 3, 1983.
9. Ivan Solotaroff, The Last Face You’ll Ever See: The Private Life of the American Death Penalty (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), pp. 56–57.
10. United Press International, “Mississippi’s Gray Steel Chamber Was Built in 1955 to Replace a Traveling Electric Chair and Executioner T. Berry Bruce Has Been on Hand Every Time It Was Used,” September 1, 1983. See also “Eerie, Emotional, Unsettling; For All Who Asked, a Diary of Gray’s Execution,” CLJDN, September 4, 1983; “After Years of Legal Delays, Death Came in Just Minutes,” CLJDN, September 2, 1983; “Eyewitness Account—He Fought It,” CLJDN, September 2, 1983; “Killer of Girl, 3, Dies in Gas Chamber,” SFC, September 2, 1983; “Mississippi Looks for Ways to ‘Refine’ Execution Process,” Chicago Sun-Times, September 3, 1983; “Gray Died Quickly, Officials Maintain,” CLJDN, September 3, 1983; “Gray’s Lawyer Calls Gas Death Cruel,” Post Herald, September 3, 1983; “Prison Official Calls for Reform after Witnessing Grisly Execution,” LADJ, September 5, 1983; United Press International, “Southern Horizons,” September 14, 1983; Solotaroff, Last Face You’ll Ever See.
11. Affidavit of Dennis N. Balske, April 13, 1992, vol. 1, exhibit 2, Fierro v. Gomez.