Hegemonic individualism and subversive stories in capital mitigation

This text offers an in-depth sociological examination of the use of individualizing and contextualizing accounts throughout the entire mitigation process of capital sentencing.

The studies are based on cases presented by capital defense attorneys and experts from trials in Delaware and illuminate the challenges involved in structuring a death penalty that is not arbitrary in a culture that is overwhelmed by individualizing discourses and thus struggles to account for the entrenched racial and economic inequality that is so conducive to lethal violence.