Among the Lowest of the Dead offers an introduction to the complex human politics of capital punishment while showing why the death penalty system remains - nearly 30 years after its overhaul - costly, slow and unpredictable.

All of the major issues surrounding the subject - political pressures, wrongful conviction, the byzantine appeals process, inconsistent sentencing, the difficulty of determining defendants' mental capacity and moral culpability, and more - are covered in a book that has been required reading in settings as diverse as freshman seminars and judicial orientations. Among the Lowest of the Dead is ideal for students and scholars interested in criminology, legal advocacy, religion, and the new literary journalism.