New Book on Surviving Death Row by authors sobered by Angola

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT: An Indictment by a Death Row Survivor
By Billy Wayne Sinclair and Jodie Sinclair

I met Billy and Jodie Sinclair several years ago in Texas. Bill Pelke

VIDEO Interview with the authors here

Dear Bill:
Below is a press release issued by Arcade Publishing announcing the release of our book, “Capital Punishment: An Indictment by a Death Row Survivor.” The book contains essays that deal with the issue of innocence and DNA exonerations that is of interest to your organization. We respectfully ask that you announce the release of our book in any newsletter or publication put out by your organization. If you would like to review the book for your publication, you can obtain a copy by contacting Casey Erbo with Arcade Publishing. Her contact information is listed below.

Any assistance you lend to our effort to educate the public about the social tragedy of the death penalty is appreciated.

Sincerely,
Billy and Jodie Sinclair

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

To request an interview or a review copy, please contact:
Casey Ebro, Arcade Publishing
Casey.ebro@arcadepub.com
(212) 475-2633

Arcade is proud to publish "Capital Punishment: An Indictment by a Death-Row Survivor" by Billy Wayne Sinclair and Jodie Sinclair, with a foreword by Sister Helen Prejean, who calls the book “a searing condemnation and a powerful guide to the futility and arrogance of the death penalty carried out in the name of justice.”

In its landmark 1972 Furman v. Georgia ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the death penalty as “capricious and arbitrary,” automatically commuting all death sentences to life in prison, but leaving the door open for states to reestablish the procedure. Many states—led by Texas, Georgia ,and Florida —took the decision as a challenge and by 1976 reinstated it. Today some 3,300 men and women await their fate on death row.

Billy Wayne Sinclair was just twenty-one years old when he heard a Louisiana judge say, “I hereby sentence you to death in the electric chair,” a sentence resulting from a botched convenience store holdup in which Billy accidentally shot and killed a man. Spared by the 1972 ruling, he spent forty years in the Louisiana prison system, including twenty years in Angola prison, one of the country’s worst—six of those years on death row.

After defeating unfathomable depression, he took up law and soon became a respected jailhouse lawyer. Billy Wayne helped integrate the still segregated Angola prison and exposed rampant corruption within the jail itself and among the state’s high-ranking politicians. He also studied journalism, and his articles won several national prizes, including the prestigious Polk Award. But memories of those six years on death row still haunt him to this day.

In this groundbreaking work, the authors examine the death penalty in great detail, from ancient history to the latest U.S. Supreme Court decisions. Informed by Billy Wayne’s firsthand experience and decades of study, Capital Punishment offers vital information about, and insights into, a subject as heated and controversial today as it ever was.

Billy Wayne Sinclair has won the PEN Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, and the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award. Released from prison in 2006, he is senior paralegal at the John T. Floyd Law Firm. His wife, Jodie Sinclair, earned her master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University and is director of public relations at a law firm. They live in Houston.

Billy Wayne Sinclair was interviewed extensively as part of a story about an Angola Prison murder case on NPR’s All Things Considered.

Here is the link to the story:

here

More on the Billy Wayne Sinclair:

An impassioned, well-researched report on one of the most burning issues facing us today: the death penalty.

Billy Wayne Sinclair was only 21 when he heard the Louisiana judge pronounce these words: "I hereby sentence you to death in the electric chair." It was the culmination of a botched holdup committed the year before in which Billy had accidentally shot and killed a man. Billy spent the next 40 years in Angola Prison, one of the country's worst, six of those years on death row. When in 1972 the Supreme Court struck down the death penalty as arbitrary and capricious, Billy was re-sentenced to life without parole. Finally released in 2006, he now examines the death penalty in great detail, from ancient history—an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth—to the present. Informed by his own experience and his decades-long studies, this book offers important information about, and insights into, a subject that is as heated and controversial today as it ever was.