Summary: It was hailed as a perfect, judicial compromise -- wider use of life sentences without parole for murderers and rapists as a replacement for capital punishment, regarded by death penalty opponents as cruel and unusual. But how is life-without-parole working out in the American criminal justice system? Charles Ogletree, professor of law at Harvard, and Austin Sarat, professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College, are co-editors of "Life Without Parole: America's New Death Penalty."
