ANATOMY OF INJUSTICE Raymond Bonner Knopf $26.95, 298 pages

When George W. Bush was running for president in 2000, he said he was confident that "every person that has been put to death in Texas under my watch has been guilty of the crime charged and has full access to the courts."

Bush signed the death warrants for more than 150 people when he was governor of Texas, about one every nine days and the most in history at that time. (His successor, Rick Perry, has presided over many more.) Texas is far and away the most likely place to be executed in the U.S.: 37 percent of all executions since 1976 have occurred in Texas. It again led the nation with 13 executions last year, more than the two closest states (Alabama and Ohio) combined but a much lower rate than the previous decade.

After Bush's comments, The New York Times assigned Raymond Bonner and another reporter to research and write about capital punishment. One of their articles was cited by the majority and the dissent in a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court case that resulted in a ban on executing people who are "mentally retarded."

Another case, involving the 1982 murder of an elderly woman in South Carolina, attracted Bonner's attention because he believes it "raises nearly all the issues that mark the debate about capital punishment: race, mental retardation, bad trial lawyers, prosecutorial misconduct, 'snitch' testimony, DNA testing, a claim of innocence."

Bonner's short book "Anatomy of Injustice: A Murder Case Gone Wrong" covers all those bases while telling the story of Edward Lee Elmore, an African American who was convicted by three different juries and spent 11,000 days in jail, most of them on death row, before being released a few days ago (after the book was published) for a crime Bonner, a lawyer and a Pulitzer Prize winner, and many others believe he did not commit.

Capital punishment is an issue of fierce, passionate debate, in Oregon and around the country. Gov. John Kitzhaber placed a moratorium on executions two weeks before a convicted murderer was scheduled to die by lethal injection. Kitzhaber was governor in 1996-97, when Oregon's only two executions since 1976 took place, and said he regretted allowing them. He did not, however, commute the sentences of Oregon's 37 death row inmates, something he has the legal authority to do. Josh Marquis, the Clatsop County district attorney, said when Kitzhaber declared the moratorium that the governor should carry out the law. Marquis will join Bonner for what is sure to be a lively discussion at 7:30 p.m. Friday at Powell's City of Books.

The Elmore case, as Bonner noted, touched on many of the most important issues in capital punishment:

Race: More than 75 percent of the victims in capital punishment cases are white, compared with about 50 percent of murder victims overall. About 34 percent of those executed since 1976 are African American; 13 percent of the overall population is African American. More than 250 African Americans have been executed for killing a white; 18 whites have been executed for killing an African American.

Mental disability: Elmore dropped out of school in the fifth grade and does not understand the concept of north, south, east or west or winter, spring, summer and fall. H e could not do the math necessary to maintain a checking account. His IQ tested at a level of mental disability.

Excerpt from:
'Anatomy of Injustice' review: Looking at capital punishment