puritan execution

Puritan True Crime

Cotton Mather and other 17th-century American writers created a genre all their own: Puritan gallows literature, which both terrified and edified.
Double Indemnity

History’s Most Notorious True Crime Story

How New York City's tabloids sensationalized the murder case that inspired the classic film noir Double Indemnity.
Death Penalty Jail Cells

How and Why Public Opinion on the Death Penalty Changed

A look at the American public's ambivalent opinion of the death penalty.
Photo of Warren Hill

Sociologists Test Six Arguments For and Against Capital Punishment

The sociologists Michael Radlet and Marian Borg test out six arguments for and against capital punishment.