For more than 300 years Massachusetts executed men and women convicted of murder. This book offers an account of how the efforts of reformers and abolitionists and the Supreme Judicial Court's commitment to the rule of law ultimately converged to end the death penalty in Massachusetts.

Alan Rogers is professor of history at Boston College and a past president of the New England Historical Association.For a video of Rogers discussing the methodology of this book, please see https: //facultimedia.com/downloads/history-murder-and-the-death-penalty-in-massachusetts/