Lethal Injection: Capital Punishment in Texas During the Modern Era (review)

114Southwestern Hutorical QuarterlyJuly turned out to be small and marginal, but it saved his business from the crushing competition of large, big-city bottlers. Although based upon company records, newspaper accounts, and interviews, this account by Karen Wright, a Dublinjournalist and civic leader, is not a heavy-duty business history. There are no extensive financial details, little information about sales technique except for advertising, and almost nothing about the mechanics ofbotding. The characters of the story are treated gentiy, and there are no secrets revealed about the Dr Pepper syrup formula other than it has never included prune juice. There is no index. This is the simple history of a small business in a quiet Texas town; it is a tale ofcommon things. Still, for people who have enjoyed drinking Dr Pepper, there is something to be learned. A half-century ago when I was a student-athlete at Southern Methodist University , for example, I would wake sometimes at nightwith asthma attacks. I discovered tiiat a cold botde ofDr Pepper with its caffeine and sugar would ease the discomfort of the attack. At three o'clock in the morning while struggling for air, I savored the flavorful ice crystals tiiat formed briefly in the neck of the botde. Billie Kloster, the leader of Dublin Dr Pepper after World War II, insisted that the drink be served at thirty-three degrees so that such ice crystals would form. It is unlikely that Klosterwas thinking about a lonely boy in Dallas with asthma—but indirecdy maybe he was. Colorado State University, EmeritusDavid G. McComb Lethal Injection: Capital Punishment in Texas During the Modern Era. ByJon Sorensen and Rocky Leann Pilgrim. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006. Pp. 238. Foreword, acknowledgments, figures, notes bibliography, index. ISBN O2g27i3oio. $ig.g5, paper.) The validity ofthe death penalty in Texas, where the nation's majority ofexecutions occur, continues to inspire emotional and often heated debate.Jon Sorensen and Rocky Leann Pilgrim may have provided a kind ofsalve for this burning issue in their supremely well-researched book, LethalInjection: CapitalPunishment in Texas During the Modem Era. Sorensen and Pilgrim take great pains in Lethal Injection to walk the reader from the end of the death penalty in ig64 to its reinstatement in 1977, the birth ofwhat is now called the modern era of the death penalty. Lethal Injection is surely bound for the college classroom. Its myriad graphs, charts, and figures are fodder for academic discussion on the topic of the death penalty and its intended effect on violent criminals versus the dubious moral satisfaction law-abiding citizens find in it. The death penalty, it has long been argued, acts as a deterrent against other would-be-violent persons-thus the intended effect on violent criminals. The dubious moral satisfaction Sorensen and Pilgrim examine is society's wont for administering a punishment relative to the crime committed. The question ofwhether the death penalty is an appropriate punishment for any crime relates to the concept of retribution. Retribution is the idea that 2007Book Reviews115 an individual who commits a crime deserves to be punished for upsetting the moral order; responsibility for restoring balance is upon the offender (P- 77)· Sorensen and Pilgrim provide an avalanche of statistics and leave it for the reader to formulate a decision as to the effectiveness, or lack thereof, of the death penalty in Texas. One thing is clear, according to information found in Lethal Injection, public support in general for the death penalty has risen in this country to nearly 70 percent, up from a 1972 poll that showed 50 percent approval. In Texas the number of people approving administering the death penalty is nearly 80 percent, according to Sorensen and Pilgrim. Lethal Injection is a scholarly work that should not be overlooked by academia as it provides the tools necessary for dialogue and dissertation for those studying or interested in social sciences, criminaljustice, and related fields. The only criticism diat could possibly be made ofthis empirical work, and it is not much ofone, is that Lethal Injection is not a casual read. It aims at providing quantifiable information infused with speculation about the death penalty, its positives and negatives, and at...