There is a particular kind of silence that surrounds executions in America.We publish to break it.
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Series 01 · 12 titles
The Abolition Series
The architecture of capital punishment — how it was built, who it was built for, and what it would mean to tear it down.
Series 02 · 11 titles
The Intervention Series
One case at a time. The appeals that fail, the evidence that surfaces too late, the men and women the state has scheduled to kill.
Free to read · 26 volumes
The Abolition Classics are free.
Classic death penalty texts — trial speeches, treatises, testimony — edited and modernized for wide readership. Read or download every volume at no cost. No account, no paywall.
Read them free→The Gallery
Slide through the texts
V. 0 · 250 BCE – 1631
Before Abolitionism
Various
V. I · 399 BCE
The Apology
Socrates
V. II · c. 310
On the Sacred Animal
Lactantius
V. III · 1760
Against the Death Penalty
Giuseppe Pelli
V. IV · 1792
Considerations on the Injustice and Impolicy of Punishing Murder by Death
Benjamin Rush
V. V · 1764
An Essay on Crimes and Punishments
Cesare Beccaria
V. VI · 1833
Argument Against Capital Punishment
Edward Livingston
V. VII · 1810
Observations on the Criminal Law of England
Sir Samuel Romilly
V. VIII · 1809
The Opinions of Different Authors Upon the Punishment of Death
Basil Montagu
V. IX · 1829
Under Sentence of Death
Victor Hugo
V. X · 1844
Essays on the Punishment of Death
Charles Spear
V. XI · 1866
Crime and Punishment
Fyodor Dostoevsky
V. XII · 1841
Report in Favor of the Abolition of the Punishment of Death by Law
John L. O'Sullivan
V. XIII · 1869
Christ and the Gallows
Marvin H. Bovee
V. XIV · 1905
An Eye for an Eye
Clarence Darrow
V. XV · 1889
A Life Sentence
Adeline Sergeant
V. XVI · 1901
The Sport of the Gods
Paul Laurence Dunbar
V. XVII · 1919
Capital Punishment in the United States
Raymond T. Bye
V. XVIII · 1898
The Ballad of Cummins Prison
Oscar Wilde
V. XIX · 1925
An American Tragedy
Theodore Dreiser
V. XX · 1815
On the Punishment of Death
Percy Bysshe Shelley
V. XXI · 1912
The Death Penalty
Gabriel Alomar
V. XXII · 1845
Thoughts on the Death Penalty
Charles C. Burleigh
V. XXIII · 1846
Capital Punishment
Charles Dickens
V. XXIV · 1791–1850
An Excerpt, a Speech & a Pamphlet
Jeremy Bentham, Maximilien Robespierre & James Haughton
V. XXV · 1858
Capital Punishment Is a Mockery of Justice
Frederick Douglass
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