White Mercy: A Study of the Death Penalty in South Africa

White Mercy presents a novel approach to the study of capital punishment in 20th-century South Africa. It focuses on official acts of mercy rather than on miscarriages of justice. Turrell bases his absorbing narrative on a thorough investigation of government statistics, court testimony, and judges' reports. He shows that racism and sexism profoundly influenced death-penalty cases but not in equal ways. Africans, whom white rulers considered the "weaker" race, and women, whom men called the "weaker" sex, entered a legal realm that both promoted preordained cultural difference and disproportionately granted clemency to females convicted of murder. What will perhaps surprise many readers is that a number of condemned white men went to the gallows because the court believed they exhibited the incorrigible instincts of the "weaker" race.

ROBERT TURRELL is Speech Writer and Senior Researcher in the Office of the Chairperson, National Council of Provinces, in the South African Parliament.