Legal History: Crime and Punishment Research Guide

Both sides of the highly charged capital punishment debate in the United States are examined in this breakthrough collection of 112 key documents, arranged by historical period. The political and social aspects of the debate are represented through a wide range of documents, including congressional hearings, Supreme Court decisions, position papers, biographical accounts, and news stories. An explanatory introduction precedes each document to help readers understand how various and seemingly unrelated social, economic, and political factors have impacted public attitudes, legislation, and judicial decisions pertaining to capital punishment. Vila and Morris provide us with the historical and ecological framework in which this centuries-old debate has unfolded.

Henderson has written a most readable book about the development of US federal criminal law between 1801 and 1829. He raises several challenging questions: 'How well did the [criminal justice] system protect society? Did the system evolve in relation to social and economic change? What was the role of politics in this evolution? Did oppression occur?'

"The subject of this book pertains to events, often unpleasant, in the domestic lives of the 17th-century Maryland colonists."--publisher's catalog description, 1938 Marylander Edward Erbery called members of the colony's proprietary assembly "rogues and puppies"; he was tied to an apple tree and received thirty-nine lashes. Jacob Lumbrozo, a Maryland Jew who suggested Christ's miracles were done by "magic," was imprisoned indefinitely, escaping execution only by the governor's pardon. Rebecca Fowler was accused of using witchcraft to cause her Calvert County neighbors to feel "very much the worse;" she was hanged on October 9, 1685. Mrs. Thomas Ward whipped a runaway maidservant with a peachtree rod, then rubbed salt into the girl's wounds; the girl died, and Mrs. Ward was fined three hundred pounds of tobacco.

Relatively unknown in this country be­fore 1874, when the first ransom kid­napping as we know it took place, the incidence of the crime has since burgeoned to a recorded number of some 1,700 cases. In 1874, the act con­stituted a crime only in a handful of jurisdictions, & in those states the maximum penalty was 7 years im­prisonment. Subsequent laws, & the making of the act a federal capital crime in the 1930s when the Lindbergh kid­napping outraged public sentiment, evolved slowly, the author of this un­usually interesting work shows. In this first attempt to bring together & analyze all known sociological & historical information on this important segment of American crime & crime control, Ernest K. Alix dispels the myth of the importance of the Lind­bergh case in changing attitudes & establishing social values.

Full title: A treatise on the criminal law of the United States: comprising a digest of the penal statutes of the general government, and of Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia; with the decisions on cases arising upon those statutes, and a general view of the criminal jurisprudence of the common and civil law.

Benedict Arnold & Cesar Chavez, John Wilkes Booth & Martin Luther King, Sirhan Sirhan, the Berrigans, the Founding Fathers, & the suffragists -- all have engaged in political behavior defined at one time or another as "criminal." Though the fire & fury of some of these names have been dimmed by the passage of time, their protest, civil disobedience, & even rebellion are refreshed in every American generation. Now revised and expanded, this widely praised & monumental work (awarded "Best Book in Law" by the Association of American Publishers) chronicles the uninterrupted & ongoing story of dissent, disobedience, violence, & rebellion in America, from the colonial era to the Oklahoma City bombing.