Bharat Malkani's Slavery and the Death Penalty: A Study in Abolition is a welcome addition to the literature on capital punishment. The American death penalty, the book's focus, has long been closely associated with slavery and racial prejudice, but the book does something no other has so comprehensively: it draws remarkable parallels between – and then extrapolates valuable lessons to be learned from – the anti‐slavery and anti‐death penalty movements. The book addresses a fundamental question informed by America's experience with slavery and its abolition: should modern‐day efforts to abolish capital punishment embrace a ‘pragmatic’ or more ‘radical’ approach (p. 7)? Examining eighteenth‐ and nineteenth‐century anti‐slavery efforts, Malkani analyses whether modern‐day abolitionists should focus their arguments on the death penalty's ineffectiveness, error‐prone nature, and excessive cost or, instead, attack capital punishment head‐on as simply wrong and immoral because it strips inmates of human dignity.

Malkani's book opens in dramatic fashion, recounting how Sojourner Truth – the social reformer who had once been enslaved – spoke passionately at Michigan's state capitol in 1881 to beat back an effort to reinstate that state's death penalty (p. 1). In 1846, Michigan had become the world's first English‐speaking jurisdiction to abolish capital punishment for murder, and in her moving speech Sojourner Truth delivered a rousing anti‐gallows message rooted in her deeply held beliefs: ‘I have come here tonight to see about a thing that fairly shocked me. It shocked me worse than slavery.’ ‘I've heard that you are going to have hanging again in this state,’ she said in her remarkable speech, posing the following question and answer: ‘Where is the man or woman who can sanction a thing as that? We are the makers of murderers if we do it.’ Malkani's ground‐breaking monograph poses – and then answers – a different but related question, underscoring the significance of human dignity and asserting that America's contemporary anti‐death penalty advocacy must be understood ‘as the continuation of the project that was put in place by the radical slavery abolitionists, which was to end practices that are not compatible with the idea of dignity’ (p. 221).

The anti‐slavery and anti‐death penalty movements both began in America's founding era (pp. 23–24), with many opponents of slavery – Dr Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, and John Quincy Adams, to name but three – also opposing capital punishment to one degree or another. ‘The first anti‐slavery societies’, Malkani observes, ‘rejected emotional appeals about the moral wrong of slavery’ (p. 11), initially proposing granting freedom only to those born after a certain date (p. 11) or arguing for gradual emancipation or colonization in Africa (pp. 14, 164). In short, early anti‐slavery societies were not rooted in the ‘moral suasion’ or ‘radicalism’ of those who – in historian Aileen Kraditor's words – saw slavery as sinful and ‘fundamentally immoral’ (p. 12). Citing the ‘moralistic’ advocacy of abolitionists William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips (p. 12) in sharp contrast to the ideas of conservatives or pragmatists of the time, Malkani notes that ‘[t]he radical abolitionists recognized the importance of transforming the consciences of the general public, to shake them out of their support for, or apathy towards, slavery’ (p. 81).

Although a number of early American anti‐slavery and anti‐gallows activists often took a ‘pragmatic’, incrementalist approach, seeking to dismantle slavery and capital punishment little by little, Malkani makes a convincing case that today's efforts to abolish the death penalty should be grounded in protecting human dignity. Laying out the history of the rise of dignity as a value from ancient Rome to Kant to the present (pp. 85–95), he contends that ‘abolition should be centered on the idea of dignity, rather than on pragmatic and conservative anti‐death penalty discourse’ (p. 221). In his enlightening book, Malkani makes an extended argument about how ‘pragmatists’ and ‘radical abolitionists’ have argued about capital punishment over the last 250 years. ‘Rather than emphasize the incompatibility of the death penalty with the inherent dignity of the person facing execution,’ he explains of the former camp, ‘pragmatic and conservative discourses focus on issues such as the risk of executing an innocent person, and the exorbitant costs of capital punishment’ (p. 2). Arguing for elevating dignity and expressing his support for an absolutist anti‐capital punishment stance, Malkani observes that ‘today's efforts to end the death penalty in the US are the continuation of the project set in place by the slavery abolitionists, and such efforts should draw on the radicalism of those abolitionists’ (p. 2).

Slavery and the Death Penalty is divided into nine chapters. ‘[T]he first three chapters’, as Malkani puts it, ‘explain the historical and conceptual links between slavery, capital punishment, and their respective abolitionist movements’ (p. 10). Chapter 1 discusses the American death penalty in the era of slavery and the transatlantic slave trade, covering a series of events and historical figures in both colonial and antebellum times. Chapter 2 examines America's death penalty and the legacy of slavery from 1865 to 1976 – a time period that stretches from the ratification of the US Constitution's Thirteenth Amendment in 1865 to the nation's bicentennial (the same year that the US Supreme Court, in Gregg v. Georgia, upheld the death penalty's constitutionality). Chapter 3 discusses the modern death penalty era, walking the reader through events from 1976 to the present – a period during which the death penalty came to be viewed by Amnesty International and other groups and individuals as incompatible with human rights. ‘In the 40 years since Gregg was decided,’ Malkani observes, ‘research has consistently shown’ that racial prejudice and arbitrariness ‘continue to infect death penalty systems across America, from the decision to seek death in particular cases; to the process of plea bargaining; to the empaneling of juries; through to the decision to sentence a person to death’ (p. 55).

The anti‐death penalty movement has come of age since the 1960s and 1970s when the US Supreme Court began wrestling with capital punishment and its constitutionality (pp. 43–47, 92, 109–110). In 1977, Amnesty International – in its landscape‐changing Declaration of Stockholm – forcefully declared that ‘[t]he death penalty is the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment and violates the right to life’ (p. 58). That declaration also called the punishment of death ‘an instrument of repression against opposition, racial, ethnic, religious and underprivileged groups’. Since that time, the world's anti‐death penalty movement has had many successes, with the vast majority of countries having now abolished capital punishment or, in practice, abandoned executions. Alongside the NAACP's ongoing work (pp. 40–41), there are, in fact, now international organizations devoted entirely to ending the death penalty's use worldwide. Ensemble Contre le Peine de Mort (ECPM), the French NGO also known as Together Against the Death Penalty, was founded in 2000, while the International Commission Against the Death Penalty was formed in Madrid in 2010. Malkani's first three chapters set the stage for the more in‐depth discussion that follows about what tactics modern‐day anti‐death penalty activists should utilize to optimize their chances of long‐term success.

While Chapter 5 covers abolitionist efforts in the courtroom, where many legal challenges to capital punishment have been fought, Chapter 6 focuses on abolitionist activities in other public arenas. These chapters explore the views of US Supreme Court Justices and others on the death penalty and compare attacks on slavery with those made on capital punishment. Chapters 7 and 8 explore other modern controversies pertaining to capital punishment. While Chapter 7 examines the debate over whether anti‐death penalty activists should advocate life‐without‐parole (LWOP) sentences as an alternative to executions, Chapter 8 highlights ‘practical’ efforts to interfere with the machinery of death.

The book's final chapter – titled ‘A Peculiar Abolition’ – takes its name from a phrase used long ago by a slave‐owning South Carolina politician and, in a much different context, by a modern New York academic. In 1837, James C. Calhoun – a long‐time US Senator from the Palmetto State and the former Vice President to John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson – referred to slavery as a ‘peculiar institution of the South’ (p. 220). It was a euphemism used by white Southerners and slave owners to justify human bondage before the Civil War. Fast forward to 2012, and David Garland – a sociologist and NYU law professor who has carefully studied America's death penalty – borrowed the ‘peculiar institution’ terminology to describe the modern American death penalty (p. 220). In spite of the international trend against the use of death sentences and executions, Garland's book, Peculiar Institution: America's Death Penalty in an Age of Abolition (2012), describes the American death penalty's stubborn persistence. In particular, Garland notes how capital punishment, like the institution of slavery before it, is concentrated in the South. That region of the country, Malkani notes, is where lynchings were also most frequent (p. 1) and where the convict‐leasing system (pp. 33–34), through which former slaves got incarcerated and then leased out to plantations to perform hard labour, came into use after slavery's abolition.

Malkani's book is a valuable retrospective on the anti‐slavery movement, and it brings a beneficial perspective to ongoing anti‐death penalty advocacy that will better inform abolitionist debates about the best way forward. For example, the comparison that Malkani draws between slave narratives and the testimonies of death‐row exonerees – and the lessons to be drawn therefrom – is particularly compelling and one that has been neglected for far too long in the scholarly literature. Just as former slaves who wrote powerful narratives of their experiences in human bondage brought moral clarity to the anti‐slavery cause, Malkani explains, the stories of former death‐row inmates show the inhumanity and immorality of capital punishment. Death‐row exonerees’ stories also demonstrate how racial prejudice is still part and parcel of the death penalty's administration. The NAACP, which has long been a leader in opposing capital punishment, got its own start in the early twentieth century combating the evils of lynching. ‘The death penalty’, US Supreme Court advocate Stephen Bright once aptly explained of the modern death penalty's connection to the past, ‘is a direct descendant of lynching and other forms of racial violence in America.’ Malkani's study of America's successful anti‐slavery campaign offers its own valuable insights to those seeking the total abolition of capital punishment.

The brutality of slavery and state‐sanctioned executions will not be lost on readers of Slavery and the Death Penalty. Neither should the fact that both enslaved persons and exonerated death‐row inmates once lived under credible threats of death. In the era of slavery, capital punishment was regularly used to frighten and intimidate and, ultimately, to quash slave rebellions, whether in the case of Gabriel's Rebellion in Virginia (1800) or Nat Turner's slave rebellion in the same state (1831). In fact, capital charges themselves constitute death threats that, in some cases, have induced false confessions, with state‐sanctioned death threats inflicting – at a minimum – severe psychological torment whenever they are used. Death threats – whether made by slave masters or overseers in the case of slavery or at the hands of the state in the case of capital punishment – must be seen for what they are: undignified and horrific acts that violate basic human rights. Malkani's book, which argues that dignity should be put at the forefront of the anti‐death penalty debate, helps to lay a solid foundation for the death penalty's demise as it shows exactly why it is so inconsistent with human dignity.

In his comparative study, Malkani is at his best when writing about dignity (pp. 84–91) and comparing – or, in some cases, noting the historical differences between – the tactics of the anti‐slavery, civil rights, and anti‐death penalty movements. He explains how former slaves (p. 1) and prominent civil rights leaders, including Frederick Douglass (p. 22) and Martin Luther King Jr (pp. 41–42), opposed the death penalty; discusses the importance of the Thirteenth Amendment (p. 29), the Fourteenth Amendment (pp. 4, 32, 35, 49), and the Civil Rights Act of 1866 (pp. 34–35); and details how slavery and capital punishment violate human dignity (p. 22) and – in their application – invidiously discriminated on the basis of race (pp. 23, 25–27, 41, 43, 47, 61–62, 67), a situation that continues to this day in the case of America's death penalty (pp. 55, 59–60). Writing about how the Ku Klux Klan (p. 32) and racially motivated lynchings terrorized minority communities (p. 36), Malkani recounts how ‘the criminal justice system and capital punishment came to be used as a means of racial control’ (p. 35).

Drawing upon numerous illustrative historical examples, Malkani details the successes and setbacks experienced by the movements for equality, for racial justice, and to end the death penalty. He writes about early American anti‐slavery (pp. 11–12, 80) and anti‐death penalty societies (p. 24), the Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850 (pp. 186–192, 202, 204–205, 210), Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad (pp. 171, 186), refusals to extradite those facing capital charges without assurances that the death penalty would not be sought (pp. 193–194), and both landmark and notorious US Supreme Court cases (pp. 61, 63, 109–110, 116–117). He also writes about the Scottsboro case (pp. 41–43), McCleskey v. Kemp (pp. 61–65), former Justice Anthony Kennedy's dignity jurisprudence (pp. 14, 88, 93, 107, 116–118), the work of the Equal Justice Initiative (pp. 36, 71–72) and Witness to Innocence (pp. 70, 148–150), efforts to block the importation of lethal injection drugs to avoid complicity with executions (pp. 194–201), and Justice Stephen Breyer's recent dissent (p. 129) in Glossip v. Gross (2015) – a case that upheld the constitutionality of Oklahoma's three‐drug lethal injection protocol. In doing so, Malkani draws upon slave narratives, the voices of anti‐slavery abolitionists, and the wrenching experiences of death‐row exonerees (pp. 91–92, 97, 147–148, 150–152) to show the inherently degrading nature of both slavery and capital punishment.

Throughout his book, Malkani insists that the fight against the death penalty be grounded in dignity – a concept that has come to have constitutional significance. ‘[A] failure to forthrightly frame the case against the death penalty in the language of dignity’, he explains, ‘risks the entrenchment of the very problems that the abolitionists are trying to eradicate’ (p. 155). Arguing that ‘human stories will have considerable impact’ (p. 155), Malkani points, for example, to the way in which the transition from mandatory death penalty laws to discretionary capital sentencing schemes only cinched the role of racial prejudice in the death penalty's administration. While the mandatory‐to‐discretionary sentencing reform ‘might initially seem like progress for opponents of the death penalty,’ Malkani contends, ‘such schemes allowed juries to hand down death sentences on the basis of race, rather than on the basis of guilt or deservingness’ (p. 39).

巴拉特·马尔卡尼（Bharat Malkani）的奴隶制和死刑：废除死刑的研究是有关死刑文献的一个受欢迎的补充。作为本书的重点，美国死刑一直与奴隶制和种族偏见密切相关，但是该书所做的事情却没有其他方面如此全面：它在反恐之间-然后从中吸取了宝贵的经验教训-有着明显的相似之处。奴隶制和反死刑运动。该书解决了一个基本问题，即美国在奴役制和废奴制方面的经验为基础：现代废除死刑的努力是否应采用“务实”或更“激进”的方法（第7页）？通过研究18世纪和19世纪的反奴隶制工作，Malkani分析了现代废奴主义者是否应将其论点集中在死刑的无效性，易犯错误的性质和过高的成本上，或者相反，

Malkani的书以戏剧化的方式开头，讲述了曾经被奴役的社会改革者Sojourner Truth在1881年在密歇根州议会大厦上热情洋溢的讲话，以支持恢复该州死刑的努力（第1页）。1846年，密歇根州成为世界上第一个废除谋杀罪判处英语的司法管辖区，而《寄居者真相》在她的感人演说中发出了令人振奋的反绞刑讯息，其根源在于她深信不疑的信念：“我今晚来到这里来让我震惊的事情 这比奴隶制更震惊我。她在非凡的讲话中说：“我听说您将再次处于这种状态，”她提出了以下问答：“可以制裁那样东西的男人或女人在哪里？如果我们这样做，我们就是凶手的创造者。” 马卡尼（Malkani）开创性的专着提出并回答了一个不同但相关的问题，强调了人类尊严的重要性，并断言美国当代反死刑倡导必须被理解为“该计划的延续。激进的奴隶制废奴主义者，其目的是结束与尊严观念不符的做法”（第221页）。

反奴隶制和反死刑运动都始于美国的建国时代（第23-24页），许多反对奴隶制的人-本杰明·拉什博士，本杰明·富兰克林和约翰·昆西·亚当斯（仅列举三个）也反对首都处以某种程度的惩罚。马卡尔尼指出，“第一个反奴隶制社会”拒绝了关于奴隶制道德错误的情感诉求（第11页），最初建议仅向在特定日期之后出生的人（第11页）授予自由，或主张逐步自由非洲的解放或殖民化（第14、164页）。简而言之，早期的反奴隶制社会并不植根于那些以历史学家艾琳·克雷多尔（Aileen Kraditor）的话将奴隶制视为犯罪和“根本不道德”的人的“道德劝说”或“激进主义”（第12页）。

尽管许多早期的美国反奴隶制和反绞刑激进主义者经常采取“务实”的，渐进主义的方法，试图一点一点地消除奴隶制和死刑，但马卡尔尼提出了令人信服的论据，即今天废除死刑的努力应该是立足于保护人类尊严。他强调了从古罗马到康德到现在的尊严上升的价值的历史（第85-95页），他主张“废除应该以尊严的思想为中心，而不是务实和保守的反犹太主义。死刑讨论”（第221页）。马尔卡尼（Malkani）在他的启发性著作中对“实用主义者”和“激进废奴主义者”如何在过去250年中争论死刑提出了广泛的争论。他对前阵营解释说，“与其强调死刑与面临处决者的固有尊严不兼容，不如说，务实和保守的论述着重于处决无辜者的风险和高昂的代价等问题。 （第2页）。马卡尼（Malkani）为提高尊严并表示支持绝对的反死刑立场而辩护，他指出，“今天，在美国结束死刑的努力是奴隶制废奴主义者设定的项目的延续，这种努力应吸引关于那些废奴主义者的激进主义（第2页）。以及极高的死刑成本”（第2页）。马卡尼（Malkani）为提高尊严并表示支持绝对的反死刑立场而辩护，他指出，“今天，在美国结束死刑的努力是奴隶制废奴主义者设定的项目的延续，这种努力应吸引关于那些废奴主义者的激进主义（第2页）。以及极高的死刑成本”（第2页）。马卡尼（Malkani）为提高尊严并表示支持绝对的反死刑立场而辩护，他指出，“今天，在美国结束死刑的努力是奴隶制废奴主义者设定的项目的延续，这种努力应吸引关于那些废奴主义者的激进主义（第2页）。

奴隶制和死刑分为九章。正如马尔卡尼所言，“前三章”“解释了奴隶制，死刑与废奴运动之间的历史和概念联系”（第10页）。第1章讨论了奴隶制和跨大西洋奴隶贸易时代的美国死刑，涵盖了殖民时期和战前时期的一系列事件和历史人物。第2章探讨了1865年至1976年美国的死刑和奴隶制遗产-从1865年美国宪法第十三修正案的批准到美国百年纪念（同年美国最高法院在Gregg诉v。佐治亚州，维持死刑的宪法性）。第3章讨论了现代死刑时代，引导读者了解1976年至今的事件。在此期间，大赦国际及其他团体和个人认为死刑与人权不符。马卡尔尼说：“自格雷格被判决以来的40年间，研究一直表明”种族偏见和任意性“继续影响着整个美国的死刑制度，从在特定案件中寻求死刑的决定开始。进行辩诉交易的过程；加强陪审团；直至判处死刑的决定”（第55页）。

自1960年代和1970年代开始，反死刑运动就已经成熟，当时美国最高法院开始对死刑及其合宪性进行角力（第43-47、92、109-110页）。1977年，大赦国际在其《改变风景的斯德哥尔摩宣言》中有力地宣布“死刑是最终的残忍，不人道和有辱人格的惩罚，并侵犯了生命权”（第58页）。该宣言还称死刑为“镇压反对派，种族，族裔，宗教和弱势群体的工具”。自那时以来，世界上的反死刑运动取得了许多成功，绝大多数国家现在废除了死刑，或者实际上废除了死刑。除了NAACP正在进行的工作（第40-41页）外，实际上还有 现在，国际组织完全致力于在世界范围内终止死刑的使用。法国非政府组织Ensemble Contre le Peine de Mort（ECPM）成立于2000年，而反对死刑国际委员会于2010年在马德里成立。Malkani的前三章为随后进行的更深入的讨论是，现代反死刑惩罚主义者应该采取哪些策略来最大化其长期成功的机会。

尽管第5章讨论了在法庭上废奴主义的努力，在那里已经对死刑进行了许多法律挑战，但第6章着重于其他公共场合的废奴主义活动。这些章节探讨了美国最高法院大法官及其他人士对死刑的看法，并将对奴隶制的攻击与对死刑的攻击进行了比较。第7章和第8章探讨了与死刑有关的其他现代争议。尽管第7章研究了关于反死刑激进主义者是否应该主张无假释无罪（LWOP）刑罚来代替死刑的辩论，但第8章强调了干预死刑机制的“实际”努力。

该书的最后一章名为“废除死刑”，其名称取自一个拥有奴隶的南卡罗来纳州政治家很久以前使用的短语，而在另一种情况下，则由一位现代纽约学者使用。1837年，詹姆斯·C·卡洪（James C. Calhoun）–一位来自帕尔梅托州的长期美国参议员，约翰·昆西·亚当斯（John Quincy Adams）和安德鲁·杰克逊（Andrew Jackson）的前副总统–称奴隶制为“南方的特殊机构”（第220页）。这是南方南方白人和奴隶主使用的一种委婉说法，用以证明内战之前人类的束缚。快进到2012年，社会学家，纽约大学法学教授大卫·加兰德（David Garland）仔细研究了美国的死刑，借用了“特殊机构”术语来描述现代的美国死刑（第220页）。特殊机构：《废奴时代的美国死刑》（2012年）描述了美国死刑的顽固坚持。特别是，加兰（Garland）指出死刑，就像之前的奴隶制一样，集中在南方。马卡尼（Malkani）指出，该地区是私刑最常见的地区（第1页），也是罪犯租赁制度（第33-34页），前奴隶通过这种制度被监禁，然后租给种植园进行表演辛苦的劳动，在奴隶制废除后开始使用。

马卡尼（Malkani）的书是反奴隶制运动的宝贵回顾，它为正在进行的反死刑倡导活动提供了有益的见解，可以更好地为废奴主义者关于最佳前进道路的辩论提供信息。例如，马卡尼（Malkani）在奴隶叙述和死亡行亡者的证词之间进行的比较，以及从中汲取的教训，尤其具有说服力，而且这一点在学术文献中被忽视了太久了。马卡尔尼解释说，就像以前的奴隶为人类奴役的经历写了有力的叙述为反奴隶制事业带来了道德上的清晰一样，前死囚犯的故事也表明死刑是不人道和不道德的。行死刑的人的故事还表明，种族偏见仍然是死刑管理的重要组成部分。长期以来一直是反对死刑的领导者的全国有色人种协进会（NAACP）在二十世纪初与私刑罪恶作斗争时就已经开始了自己的事业。美国最高法院辩护人斯蒂芬·布莱特曾经恰当地解释了现代死刑与过去的联系，“死刑”是美国私刑和其他形式的种族暴力的直接后裔。马卡尼（Malkani）对美国成功的反奴隶制运动的研究为那些寻求完全废除死刑的人提供了宝贵的见解。美国最高法院辩护人斯蒂芬·布莱特曾经恰当地解释了现代死刑与过去的联系，“死刑”是美国私刑和其他形式的种族暴力的直接后裔。马卡尼（Malkani）对美国成功的反奴隶制运动的研究为那些寻求完全废除死刑的人提供了宝贵的见解。美国最高法院辩护人斯蒂芬·布莱特曾经恰当地解释了现代死刑与过去的联系，“死刑”是美国私刑和其他形式的种族暴力的直接后裔。马卡尼（Malkani）对美国成功的反奴隶制运动的研究为那些寻求完全废除死刑的人提供了宝贵的见解。

奴隶制和国家批准的处决的残酷不会失去的读者奴隶制和死刑。被奴役者和死刑犯无罪释放的囚犯曾经生活在可信的死亡威胁下，这一事实也不应该。在奴隶制时代，无论是在弗吉尼亚州的加百列（Gabriel）叛乱（1800）还是同一州纳特纳（Nat Turner）的奴隶叛乱（1831）中，都经常使用死刑来吓and和恐吓，最终平息奴隶叛乱。实际上，资本押金本身就构成了死亡威胁，在某些情况下，这些威胁导致了虚假的供认，而国家批准的死亡威胁在使用时至少会造成严重的心理折磨。必须看到死亡威胁，无论是由奴隶主或监工（在奴隶制中，还是在国家手里，在死刑中），因为它们是：侵犯基本人权的不雅和恐怖行为。马卡尼（Malkani）的书认为，应将尊严放在反死刑辩论的最前线，这为死刑的消亡奠定了坚实的基础，因为它确切地表明了为什么死刑与人类尊严如此不一致。

在他的比较研究中，马卡尼（Malkani）在撰写有关尊严的文章时处于最佳状态（第84-91页），并且比较（或者在某些情况下指出了两者之间的历史差异）反奴役，民权和反奴隶制的策略。死刑运动。他解释了以前的奴隶（第1页）和著名的民权领袖，包括弗雷德里克·道格拉斯（Frederick Douglass）（第22页）和马丁·路德·金（Martin Luther King Jr）（第41-42页）如何反对死刑；讨论了第十三修正案（第29页），第十四修正案（第4、32、35、49页）和1866年《民权法》（第34-35页）的重要性；并详细说明了奴隶制和死刑如何侵犯人的尊严（第22页），并在适用时根据种族歧视地加以歧视（第23、25-27、41、43、47、61-62、67页），美国死刑的情况一直持续到今天（pp。55，59–60）。马卡尼（Malkani）在撰写《古兰经》（Ku Klux Klan）（第32页）和出于种族动机的私刑处决了少数族裔社区（第36页）的同时，叙述了“刑事司法系统和死刑如何被用作种族控制手段”（p。32）。 35）。

马卡尼（Malkani）借鉴了众多具有历史意义的历史例子，详细介绍了争取平等，种族正义和结束死刑运动所经历的成功和挫折。他撰写了有关美国早期的反奴隶制（第11–12、80页）和反死刑协会（第24页），1793年和1850年的《逃亡奴隶法案》（第186–192、202、204–205页， 210），哈里特·塔布曼（Harriet Tubman）和地下铁路（pp。171，186），拒绝引渡那些面临资本指控的人，但没有保证不会寻求死刑（pp。193–194），具有里程碑意义和臭名昭著的美国最高法院案例（第61、63、109-110、116-117页）。他还撰写了关于McCleskey诉Kemp案的Scottsboro案（第41-43页）。（第61–65页），前任大法官安东尼·肯尼迪的尊严判例（第14、88、93、107、116–118页），《平等司法倡议》的工作（第36、71–72页）和“无罪证人” （第70，148-150），努力阻止致命注射药物的进口，以避免与执行同谋（第194-201），以及法官Stephen布雷耶近期异议的（第129页）Glossip诉格罗斯（2015 ）–维持俄克拉何马州三药致命注射方案合宪性的案例。在这样做的过程中，Malkani借鉴了奴隶的叙述，反奴隶制废除主义者的声音以及死亡行亡者的痛苦经历（第91-92、97、147-148、150-152页），以显示出内在的堕落性奴隶制和死刑。

在整个著作中，马卡尔尼坚持认为，与死刑的斗争必须有尊严地进行，这一概念已具有宪法意义。他解释说：“ [没有以有尊严的语言直言不讳地反对死刑的案子”，“有可能使废奴主义者试图根除的问题更加根深蒂固”（第155页）。Malkani认为“人类故事将产生重大影响”（第155页），例如，指出了从强制性死刑法过渡到酌处死刑判决方案的方式仅消除了种族偏见在死刑判决中的作用。行政。马卡尼认为，虽然强制性至酌处性的判决改革“一开始可能对反对死刑的人来说是进步，”