num_pages: 154
description: Autobiography of an inmate of the "Fort Worth Death House," detailing the inadequacies and abuses of the 1950s prison system from the inside. An extraordinary jailhouse memoir: an unanswerable indictment of the American-specifically, Texan-system of juvenile institutionalization, punitive incarceration, and execution. The author, a lengthily self-justifying rapist (who protests his conviction without attributing significance to the crime he recounts[low IQ]) was first sentenced to death, later commuted to life imprisonment; as an inmate, McCune was classified as "psychotic" and subjected to an array of physical, psychological, and psychiatric abuses then - and-now - widely practiced in American prisons, and permitted to continue by the indifference of the American public.
language: English
title: The Autobiography of Billy McCune
titlecomplete: The Autobiography of Billy McCune
ratings_count: 1
publisher: Straight Arrow Books