Hidden Victims: The Effects of the Death Penalty on Families of the Accused

America is fascinated with murder, as evidenced by the media's elaborate and often sensational coverage of homicides, the plethora of recreated television crime programs-such as America's Most Wanted and Unsolved Mysteries-and the number of high-grossing films and best-selling novels that revolve around murder plots. We love to be afraid and we love to hate offenders. Murderers, particularly those sentenced to death, we consider to be unusually heinous, often sub-human, and entirely different from the rest of us. In Hidden Victims , sociologist Susan F. Sharp challenges this culturally ingrained perspective by reminding us that those individuals facing a death sentence, in addition to being murderers, are brothers or sisters, mothers or fathers, daughters or sons, relatives or friends. Through a series of vivid and in-depth interviews with families of the accused, she demonstrates how the exceptionally severe way in which we view those on death row.