In her 2008 Gladys M. Kammerer Award-winning book, co-author Amber Boydstun brings her experience in research and analysis to the subject of the death penalty in America. Since 1996, death penalties in America have declined more than 60 percent. The discovery of innocence, documented here through painstaking analyses of media coverage and with newly developed methods, has led to historic shifts in public opinion and to a sharp decline in use of the death penalty by juries across the country. A social cascade, starting with legal clinics and innocence projects, has snowballed into a national phenomenon that may spell the end of the death penalty in America.