Without Mercy: The Stunning True Story of Race, Crime, and Corruption in the Deep South
Praise forWithout Mercy:"Must-read."--New York Post"Georgia’s history is a goldmine of corruption, and David Beasley... has reached in and grabbed a few glittering chunks for examination…Without Mercyis well researched and Beasley moves along his various plots with a mannered precision that emphasizes the giddy perversities of Georgia life in the ‘30s."--Atlanta Journal-Constitution"Beasley’s catalogue of inequities accrues to a kind of tragic narrative, a tale in which progress is too slow to save those whom tradition would rather let die."--The Boston Globe"[Beasley] effectively juxtaposes the lives of the black men who were executed with white men who were not, following their passage through the judicial system. Beasley’s well-documented and vivid account ultimately puts capital punishment itself on trial."--Publishers WeeklyThe bookWithout Mercy, is a stunning true story of race, crime and corruption in the deep South as it pertains to the pattern of convicting and in some cases executing people of color without fair a trial."--Baltimore Sun"This is a gripping read for anyone… This is a must read."--Charleston Chronicle"David Beasley's fastidiously researchedWithout Mercytells the story of a justice system that was anything but just… Much like a nightmare or a heart-pounding action movie, this is a story one doesn't easily forget.Without Mercyis history, but its shadows and echoes are still very much alive today in the unsettling and eye-opening reality of capital punishment… A terrifying study of how lopsided the justice system can be while still technically maintaining the letter of the law."--Shelf Awareness"Beasley builds his thesis case by case. [and] retains his reporter’s objectivity as he records the facts."--Book Reporter“Without Mercyreads like a John Grisham thriller, but unfortunately, it isn’t. It is, sadly and regrettably, entirely true. In a meticulous and measured book that lifts the curtain on a handful of murders that took place in Georgia in the New Deal era, David Beasley has illuminated the role that race, wealth, social status, and privilege play in determining who lives and who dies in our nation’s execution chambers. This is not only history and crime-writing at its very finest, it is a haunting and searing moral indictment of a legal system that remains to this day characterized by the very same inequalities.”---David R. Dow, author ofThe Autobiography of an Execution“Without Mercybuilds outward from one dramatic event, the mass execution of six black men in Georgia in 1938, to tell a compelling story that rings the bell of justice to our own time.”---James H. Madison, author ofA Lynching in the Heartland: Race and Memory in America“David Beasley’s superbWithout Mercyis that rare true-crime book that deepens your understanding of a time and place even as it shakes you to the bone. If Raymond Chandler and James Agee had gotten together, this is what they might have written.”---Steve Oney, author ofAnd the Dead Shall Rise: The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo Frank“The modern death penalty in Georgia was preceded not too many years before by a system that was plagued by racism, injustice, and political corruption. In his fascinating book,Without Mercy, David Beasley tells the stories of many who vainly sought justice in this earlier system. Hopefully, all such prejudice and official misconduct has been weeded out, but it would be naive to think that human nature has changed so radically that executions can now be carried out without deep concerns.”---Richard C. Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center“David Beasley’s prodigious research has excavated the bones of a sordid time in Georgia’s history, when the unholy alliance of corruption and white supremacy, operating behind the mask of civility and the hood of the Ku Klux Klan, perverted justice all the way to the death chamber. Beasley shows men of privilege and of penury, white and black, all of them convicted criminals, as they move closer to the electric chair and beg for exemption from one of the nation’s largest mass executions in a single day.”---Hank Klibanoff, Pulitzer Prize--winning coauthor ofThe Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation "Not often does a single book deal with governmental corruption, poverty, inequality, history and crime. David Beasley's book does all that - and does it masterfully…The grinding poverty that drenched the state is described in a way that tears at the soul...Anyone interested in the sufferings of the Great Depression and in criminal justice will benefit from perusing this work. It is a keeper, one of the best I've seen in a long time." --The Oklahoman