Welcome! This guide will serve as a starting point for Shippensburg University students wishing to conduct research on various aspects of the national debate over capital punishment. You will find sources that introduce you to your topic and keep you up-to-date with links to news articles, research websites, journal articles, research reports and other selected key publications, books & E-books, research organizations and advocacy groups, data sources, and links to general and specialized databases for further research.
Main Term(s): capital punishment
Related Terms: capital punishment in motion pictures, death, executions and executioners, power over life & death
Broader Terms: criminal law, punishment
Narrower Terms: capital punishment sentencing, death row, death row inmates, discrimination in capital punishment, electrocution, firing squads (execution), hanging (death), lethal injection (execution), shooting (execution),
Capital Punishment by 
Cruel and Unusual: The American Death Penalty and the Founders' Eighth Amendment by 
America's Death Penalty: Between Past and Present by 
Life Without Parole: America's New Death Penalty? by 
Capital Punishment in America: Race and the Death Penalty over Time by 
In This Timeless Time: Living and Dying on Death Row in America by 
The Death of the American Death Penalty: States Still Leading the Way by 
Peculiar Institution: America's Death Penalty in an Age of Abolition by 
Killing McVeigh: The Death Penalty and the Myth of Closure by
Use this search tool to find important advocacy websites both for and against capital punishment.
There are fewer current advocacy organizations of national stature advocating for capital punishment than against it.
A number of important national newspapers have topic or issue sections of their website that bring together all the paper's articles on particular topics. The leading example of this is "Times Topics" from the New York Times. Each topic guide/section has a search tool that lets you refine your search.
Unfortunately, these sections are often not easy to browse or locate on the newspaper websites. Use the "High Quality Web Source Finder" search box above to search for your topic. Then choose the Newspaper Topic Guides tab to look for these in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Chicago Tribune. If you should hit a pay wall when browsing these newspapers, simply search for articles from any of these three papers using the ProQuest Newstand library database.
The Congressional Research Service (CRS) is the public policy research division of Congress. It issues detailed research reports on a very wide range of issues. CRS doesn't maintain its own website, but its reports are available through several organizations and libraries.
