Author Dr. Benjamin Fleury-Steiner will discuss his book “Jurors’ Stories of Death: How America’s Death Penalty Invests in Inequality,” at Lycoming College on March 26 at 7:30 p.m. in Barclay Lecture Hall, G-11, Heim Bldg. Part of the Strauser Lecture series, the talk is free and open to the public.

Fleury-Steiner’s book looks at the men and women who are behind the life-or-death decisions made by juries across America. He draws on real-life accounts of white and black jurors in capital-punishment trials to discuss the effect of race on the sentencing process. Through his research, Fleury-Steiner finds that race is invariably a factor in sentencing and concludes his work by calling for the abolition of the death penalty in order for America to begin to free itself from its traditional patterns of racism and classism.

Fleury-Steiner is an associate professor of criminal justice and sociology at the University of Delaware. He earned a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice and a master’s and doctorate degrees in sociology from Northeastern University in Boston. His teaching and research interests include inequality, law and society and social control.

Fleury-Steiner also co-authored “The New Civil Rights Research: A Constitutive Perspective” with Laura Beth Nielson, an associate professor of sociology at Northwestern University, in 2006, and has a forthcoming book titled “Dying Inside: the HIV/AIDS Ward at Limestone Prison.”

The Strauser Lecture series is held each year, sponsored by the criminal justice department, to honor the memory of Larry Strauser, a 1959 graduate of Lycoming College and member of the College’s faculty from 1973 until his death in 1999. Strauser, who earned a master’s in public administration from the University of Arizona, started the interdisciplinary criminal justice program at Lycoming College in 1977.

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