Dead wrong: errors in capital punishment from Northeastern Univ. Press.

"There are many people who are uneasy about rising crime," says Constance E. Putnam, "and they have a gut feeling that capital punishment might do something about it." But because Putnam and her co-authors, University of Florida sociology professor Michael L. Radelet and Tufts philosophy professor Hugo Adam Bedau, believe that the death penalty is not a solution, they decided that this was a good time to take their case from academe to a wider audience via In Spite of Innocence: Erroneous Convictions in Capital Cases ($29.95), coming this December from Northeastern University Press.

The authors provide detailed descriptions of 13 cases that have taken place between …