"At a time when increasing numbers of Americans seem to be wondering about the fairness of capital punishment, Vandiver's book is a forceful and sobering reminder of the arbitrary course of justice in the United States."-W. Fitzhugh Brundage, William B. Umstead Professor of History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Why did some offenses in the South end in mob lynchings while similar crimes led to legal executions? Why did still other cases have nonlethal outcomes? In this well-researched and timely book, Margaret Vandiver explores the complex relationship between these two forms of lethal punishment, challenging the assumption that executions consistently grew out of-and replaced-lynchings.

Vandiver begins by examining the incidence of these practices in three culturally and geographically distinct southern regions. In rural northwest Tennessee, lynchings outnumbered legal executions by eleven to one and many African Americans were lynched for racial caste offenses rather than for actual crimes. In contrast, in Shelby County, which included the growing city of Memphis, more men were legally executed than lynched. Marion County, Florida, demonstrated a firmly entrenched tradition of lynching for sexual assault that ended in the early 1930s with three legal death sentences in quick succession.

With a critical eye to issues of location, circumstance, history, and race, Vandiver considers the ways that legal and extralegal processes imitated, influenced, and differed from each other. A series of case studies demonstrates a parallel between mock trials that were held by lynch mobs and legal trials that were rushed through the courts and followed by quick executions.

Tying her research to contemporary debates over the death penalty, Vandiver argues that modern death sentences, like lynchings of the past, continue to be influenced by factors of race and place, and sentencing is comparably erratic.

Margaret Vandiver is a professor in the department of criminology and criminal justice at the University of Memphis.

Table of Contents:

Contents
List of Illustrations and Tables
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter One Legal and Extralegal Executions in the American South
Chapter Two Lethal Punishment in Tennessee and Florida
Chapter Three Eleven Lynchings for Every Execution: Lethal Punishment in Northwest Tennessee
Chapter Four "There Can be Nothing but Death": Lethal Punishment for Rape in Shelby County, Tennessee
Chapter Five "The First Time a Charge Like This Has Ever Been Tried in the Courts": The End of Lynching in Marion County, Florida
Chapter Six The Mob and the Law: Mock Trials by Mobs and Sham Legal Trials
Chapter Seven "The First Duty of a Government": Lynching and the Fear of Anarchy
Chapter Eight When the Mob Ruled: The Lynching of Ell Persons
Chapter Nine Prevented Lynchings: White Intervention and Black Resistance
Chapter Ten "No Reason Why We Should Favor Lynching or Hanging": Efforts to End Legal and Extralegal Executions in Tennessee
Chapter Eleven Conclusions
Appendix A Sources and Methods
Appendix B Inventory of Confirmed Lynchings and Legal Executions
Notes
Bibliography
Index