Attitudes toward the death penalty have changed dramatically throughout the course of history, evolving from times when public executions were excuses for raucous entertainment, to the modern era of private, bureaucratised, mechanised, and sanitised executions that are out of sight and out of mind. Conforming to modern sensibilities, state-sanctioned killing is somehow more acceptable to us than public hangings, allowing us to imagine that the inmate's death is relatively painless. However, the author presents compelling arguments to the contrary, and also argues that death row itself is a form of psychological torture and slow, painful dehumanisation. The United States is alone among Western democracies in its support for capital punishment. Studies show that capital punishment is not a deterrent to crime, that racial disparities in the implementation of the death penalty are rampant, and that all kinds of procedural errors, incompetent defence lawyers, and mistaken eyewitness identification lead to an alarming number of wrongful convictions. This book aims to provide valuable information and strategies to those who are opposed to the death penalty, and to change the views of those people who support it.