A Courageous Fool: Marie Deans and Her Struggle against the Death Penalty

Todd C. Anderson is a graduate student in public policy analysis at the University of Virginia. . Peppers, Fowler Professor of Public Affairs at Roanoke College and Visiting Professor of Law at Washington and Lee University, is co-author of Anatomy of an Execution: The Life and Death of Douglas Christopher Thomas.Margaret A

During Marie's time as a death penalty opponent in South Carolina and Virginia, she experienced the highs of helping exonerate the innocent and the lows of standing death watch in the death house with thirty-four condemned men.. There have been many heroes and victims in the battle to abolish the death penalty, and Marie Deans fits into both of those categories. A South Carolina native who yearned to be a fiction writer, Marie was thrust by a combination of circumstancesincluding the murder of her beloved mother-in-lawinto a world much stranger than fiction, a world in which minorities and the poor were selected to be sacrificed to what Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun called the "machinery of death."Marie found herself fighting to bring justice to the legal process and to bring humanity not only to prisoners on death row but to the guards and wardens as well

Great Book! I had Dr Kyle Loren Great Book! I had Dr. Peppers as a professor and he is an expert on the death penalty. This book describes in great detail the life of Marie Deans. Her life was dedicated to ending the death penalty in South Carolina and Virginia.. "Powerful, sad, and inspiring" according to Mary W. Atwell. This is a remarkable book. Peppers uses a combination of memoir, recollections, and traditional scholarship to create a powerful story of Marie Deans and her work with inmates on death row. One can only be in awe of her tireless commitment to support the humanity of those who had been condemned to d. A must read! This book gives haunting insight to the life of a remarkable woman who dedicated her life to hard, gut wrenching work. This book provides a special and well-researched look into the life of an important woman. It's a book that deserves a spot on all bookshelves.

This wonderful tribute to her notes that 'Marie felt like the world had forgotten her.' No chance."—Victor L. But she differed from the rest of us in that she was incapable of turning a blind eye. Opposing the death penalty then was very much an uphill struggle. She taught bitter men to laugh, and she wept as the state killed them. More significantly, lawyers and their teams have labored in the trenches to save their clients' lives. Few, if any, however, have worked so long and hard for so little appreciation and reward as Marie Deans. Marie Deans got lucky."Phyllis Theroux, author of California and Other States of Grace and The Good Bishop. It takes first-rate biographers to do justice to a first-rate human being. Her heart broke every time. Streib, Professor of Law Emeritus, Ohio Northern University, and author of Death Penalty for Juveniles"Some say I've done a thing or two for