Saundra D. Westervelt

Life after Death Row examines the post-incarceration struggles of individuals who have been wrongly convicted of capital crimes, sentenced to death, and subsequently exonerated. Drawing upon research on trauma, recovery, coping, and stigma, the authors weave a nuanced fabric of grief, loss, resilience, hope, despair, and meaning to provide the richest account to date of the struggles faced by people striving to reclaim their lives in contemporary American society after years of wrongful incarceration.

The American criminal justice system contains numerous safeguards to prevent the conviction of innocent persons. The Bill of Rights provides nineteen separate rights for the alleged criminal offender. Despite these safeguards, wrongful convictions persist, and the issue has reverberated in the national debate over capital punishment. The essays in this volume are written from a cross-disciplinary perspective by some of the most eminent lawyers, criminologists, and social scientists in the field today. The most important single characteristic among wrongful conviction cases, the contributors argue, is chronic denial of the existence of a problem by politicians and prosecutors and their failure to act decisively when evidence of a possible wrongful conviction comes to light.