Why the Death Penalty is Dying: A New Book Tells the Surprising Story

The New York Times, January 26, 2021: Book Review, ‘Let the Lord Sort Them: The Rise and Fall of the Death Penalty’ by Maurice Chammah

“The journalist Maurice Chammah’s sober, densely reported first book, “Let the Lord Sort Them,” promises a history of “the rise and fall of the death penalty.” But as it tells that focused tale, it becomes — almost unwittingly — a case study that speaks more broadly to our current moment, about building monumental change brick by brick.

How? Not through big ideas in Washington, D.C., but through tedious grass-roots whittling. Not through purity tests but through unlikely coalitions of the righteous, the tainted and the grappling. Not by raising an issue’s visibility but by keeping its profile down.”

Let the Lord Sort Them on Bookshop.org

The New York Times: An Excerpt from Let the Lord Sort Them

The Marshall Project, January 26, 2021: The Case That Made Texas the Death Penalty Capital, an excerpt from Let the Lord Sort Them

The Nation, January 25, 2021: The Trauma of the Death Penalty in Texas

The Marshall Project is a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization that seeks to create and sustain a sense of national urgency about the U.S. criminal justice system. We achieve this through award-winning journalism, partnerships with other news outlets and public forums. In all of our work we strive to educate and enlarge the audience of people who care about the state of criminal justice.

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