The Rope, the Chair, and the Needle

The Rope, the Chair, and the Needle: Capital Punishment in Texas, 1923–1990 is a 1993 book by James W. Marquart, Sheldon Ekland-Olson, and Jonathan R. Sorensen that examines capital punishment in Texas.

The book considers the historical administration of the Texas death penalty through both statistical and anecdotal analysis.

[1] The authors argue that the execution rate in Texas is a symptom of the "cultural tradition of exclusion" in the Southern United States.

Executions, they argue, are a way to continue to "dehumanize" and "exclude" certain groups from normal society.

[2][3][4] The book was published by the University of Texas Press in 1993 (ISBN 978-0-292-75213-9).