Who Owns Death? Capital Punishment, the American Conscience, and the End of Executions

by Robert Jay Lifton, Greg Mitchell

Capital punishment has existed in our country for centuries, but Americans have always felt conflicted about it. Now, as the number of executions rises, opposition to the death penalty is building. To explain this society-wide struggle to come to grips with executions, a pair of award-winning authors—a distinguished psychiatrist and acclaimed journalist—talked to Americans deeply involved in the death penalty system.

Highly topical and provocative, Who Owns Death? is unique in exploring the mindset of those who play some role in executions—including prison wardens, prosecutors, jurors, judges, and relatives of murder victims, many of whom reveal surprising doubts about, even opposition to, state killing. Indeed, in a sure-to-be controversial conclusion, the authors predict that executions in America will come to an end in the near future.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, History, Psychology, Crime, Social Science, Social

Paperback

First published October 31, 2000

About the author

Robert Jay Lifton was an American psychiatrist and author, chiefly known for his studies of the psychological causes and effects of wars and political violence, and for his theory of thought reform. He was an early proponent of the techniques of psychohistory.

Reviews

[Kelsey McAlister · Rating 1 out of 5]

Unfortunately, this book is very outdated. Had some interesting excerpts from prosecutors/judges/people actually doing the executing, but the writer’s abolitionist optimism from the end of the 20th century was frustrating to read in 2024 when the death penalty very much didn’t die as everyone thought it would.

[Peregrine 12 · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in this topic. 'Who Owns Death?' was the tipping point for me: I went from one of those 'not-sure-about-death-penalty' types to 'oh-my-god-this-makes-NO-sense-whatsoever.' This book approaches the topic legally, ethically, and morally, and does it in a logical, cool-headed manner.

[Ky Hoang · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is definitely morally struggling to pass a death penalty onto someone for committing a crime. I just so happened to be reading the Twelve Angry Men at the same time as this book, and they both deal with a dearh penalty.

[_merald_ · Rating 5 out of 5]

So good.

Last couple lines:
pg253 By sanitising executions and limiting genuine witness, the state seeks to overcome our inherent revulsion to killing, but that revulsion needs, instead, to be nurtured and mobilised. We can then bear witness to human cruelty in ways that enhance the entire flow of human life.

[John Willis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed the perspective that this book brought to the topic of the death penalty. It started off with the history of the death penalty. It then covered it from the perspective of wardens, guards, chaplains, doctors, prosectors, governors, jurors, judges, witnesses, murder victim's families and the condemned. It also discussed pubic opinion and worldwide view of the death penalty. I enjoyed the different take on the topic.

[Carina · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I was in university I toyed with the idea of writing a dissertation - I even had a topic, why the UK stopped using the death penalty when the US didn't. I planned on examining the history of the two countries and try and understand why when the two countries share a history (i.e the British settlers) they developed so differently. I was going to briefly talk about the Native Americans, the effect the French and Spanish settlers might have had, the role of religion between the two countries... I had it pretty much planned. So, when I first visited America in 2008 and went to the The Strand in New York (18 miles of books - I was in heaven) I found this and thought it would be a great resource.

The idea of writing the dissertation fell through but I kept the book and planned to read it at some point in my final year of uni - well that passed with hectic reading of books needed for my degree so I planned to read it after... but then I got caught up in work, real life and this book remained tucked away with my other law books. I knew it was there but as time passed the thought of reading it didn't seem as urgent or important.

Well - my New Year Resolution for this site this year was to read more non-fiction books and so I dug this out and sat down to read.

I am not too sure at this point how out to date this book is, but is was still really interesting. The psychological implications were interesting and, from the UK Law student perspective, the process of seeking a death penalty sentence was intriguing. I really liked the fact that the authors chose to focus on pretty much every person involved in the process - and that fact that they drew so often on topical cases that I had heard about provided this book with a weight that I didn't necessarily expect (I thought this would be more of an essay style book that focussed on theories and abstractions rather than the reality of a number of different cases).

If anyone has an interest in the death penalty I would say this would be a great book - even if it just acts as a starting point or provides background information that you can build upon the writing style isn't dry and the shorter sections within the chapters allows for bite sized chunks of information.

[Valerie]

In Heinlein's The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, Professor de La Paz asks, re government, "Under what circumstances is it moral for a group to do that which it is not moral for a member of that group to do alone?".

Before he was murdered (there's no such thing as an 'execution'), Eichmann argued that he felt no guilt for what he'd done because "If I had won, I would have killed you. But you have won, so you're killing me."

Lifton does a fairly good job of recognizing that 'death penalties' are not about reducing violence: they're about a monopoly on violence by the state: and an implacable, irreconcilable blood feud, at that.

A woman I talked to once said that by establishing mandatory penalties, the possibility of forgiveness is relenquished.

The title of this book is the meat of the matter: the rest is explication--but it's necessary to provide the explication, since it rarely is made explicit.

If I own death, I can choose not to use it. If the state owns it, I'm robbed of even the choice whether to kill or not. If nobody owns death, then why are we mandating it?

[Vasil Kolev · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a good description of the different people and parties involved in the capital punishment in the USA (although it would've been a bit better to have some more information on the rest of the world), but is biased, and it shows too much in the text. Even if they're biased somewhat in my direction, it's still annoying.

Also, there's no real discussion or facts on for example the effectiveness of the capital punishment as a deterrent, which would've made a great addition to the book. The authors also don't seem to try to get what's behind all the religious rationalizations of some of the people in the book, and seems like that a lot of facts are missing (for example, about the murderers).

[Tyler Sullivan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not very well written, yet the information is good. The rating is based on the information presented, he gives a good argument against capital punishment.

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was fascinating.