Trial Of Walter Graham Rowland

Criminoloogist Robin Odell has compiled this gruesome gallery of cases from all over the world, revealing the growth in serial slayings, contract killings and middle-class murders and investigating what motivates people to commit the ultimate crime. As well as gangsters and ordinary felons, the book includes doctors, millionaries, housewives, children, lawyers, accountants, officers and gentlemen who have succumbed to the killing instinct. Behind the sensational names concocted by the tabloid press - 'Boston Strangler', 'Dracula Killer', 'Night Stalker', 'Granny Killer' - lurk real murderers committing acts of violence in circumstances often more bizarre than fiction. Arranged in an easy-to-use A-Z format, the book contains over 500 cases from serial killers such as Dennis Nilsen and Ted Bundy, to those such as Jeremy Bamber and Steven Benson who dispatched their parents for money; from murderous New Zealand teenagers whose story made a successful film, to the many doctors and nurses who took life instead of saving it; from unsolved murders such as the murder of Little Gregory in France to the paid assignments of John Waynes Hearn, a Vietnam veteran who killed to order. The result is a classic of true crime, a definitive work on murder as a worldwide phenomenon.

This illuminating broad-based political and cultural study presents the definitive account of the campaign to abolish capital punishment in the period 1955-69. It comprises a work of contemporary history exploring the theme from a number of angles, both pro and contra, which have not been covered so extensively before. From the sphere of governmental and parliamentary politics, to the relevant pressure groups, to the role of the mass media, to the significance of the different churches, and the influence of professional bodies, such as those representing the police and prison officers, the book skilfully identifies their interaction with one another. It examines the effect on the campaign of fluctuations in public opinion, and of controversial murder cases such as those of Timothy Evans, Derek Bentley, Ruth Ellis and James Hanratty, which in turn often informed the state of public opinion The work sets the campaign in the context of the social and cultural ferment of the era (the advent of the permissive society), and contrasts the fortunes of the movement with those of other "conscience issues," such as the legalisation of abortion, homosexual law reform, divorce liberalisation and the abolition of theatre censorship. It seeks to account for the success of the campaign within a relatively short time span in the face of intense public antipathy and a concerted effort by various elements of the establishment to thwart its fulfilment. It asks why the campaign succeeded when so many others facing lesser institutional obstacles failed, and it asks why it succeeded when it did and in the way it did, and considers whether the success of the campaign can be accounted for by the Zeitgeist. On one level it is a study of the politics of social reform, but at a deeper level it is a study of the way in which social trends feed through into political action at the parliamentary level, and illustrates the process of policy formation in the area of private members legislation and free votes where "party" has voluntarily taken a back seat.

White provides the most comprehensive scholarly compilation of fictional work of legal suspense in existence. Primarily a bibliography of novels, it also annotates plays, scripts for film and television, novelizations, and short-story collections about lawyers and the law. The idea behind the principal of selection is to disdain labels that reduce the variety of the legal thriller to a subgenre of mystery fiction. Novels that range from suspense thrillers through science fiction to the philosophical novel are included if justice is thematically important. It is therefore an eclectic reference source beyond a compilation of books about lawyers as protagonists. Its biographical and scholarly information about authors, major and minor, and their novels or works is traditionally encyclopedic and objective regardless of whether the work has been genre-defined, or worse—deified as a classic or denigrated as a bestseller. Many novels included are long out of print, but historically interesting for their contribution to the lineage of the courtroom drama, showing that the history of the legal thriller is one of the major branches of modern literature since the Age of Reason. The criterion of justice denoted moves beyond the fact of lawyers and courtrooms to select seminal novels like Robert Travers' Anatomy of a Murder as well as the romantic potboiler. Among the more than 2,000 works are the Perry Mason novels of Erle Stanley Gardner, John Mortimer's Rumpole series, along with a staple of fiction by major authors of the genre like John Lescroart, Lisa Scottoline, Margaret Maron, Scott Turow, and John Grisham. There are also individual works by Shakespeare, Goethe, Kafka, Camus, and Twain delineating humanity's obsession with the law as its shining prop of civilization and, alternative, béte-noire of the common individual caught up in its maw. The appendices include comments by lawyer-novelist Michael A. Kahn, a historical introduction to the legal thriller, craft notes by writers and prominent trial lawyers responding to author and lawyer questionnaires, bibliography of critical sources and articles, series characters, and the legal terminology found in courtroom dramas and novels. An essential reference tool for scholars, researchers as well as the occasional reader of legal thrillers.

Profiles of crimes that occurred prior to 1992 and the criminals.

The authors examine the various steps within the criminal justice system which have resulted in the conviction of the innocent, and suggest remedies as to how miscarriages might be avoided in the future. The contributors comprise academics, campaigners and practitioners.