Charles Ogletree

It was hailed as a perfect, judicial compromise -- wider use of life sentences without parole for murderers and rapists as a replacement for capital punishment, regarded by death penalty opponents as cruel and unusual. But how is life-without-parole working out in the American criminal justice system? Charles Ogletree, professor of law at Harvard, and Austin Sarat, professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College, are co-editors of "Life Without Parole: America's New Death Penalty."

On Tuesday, July 16, 2009, Henry Louis Gates Jr., a renowned Harvard professor acclaimed for his work on racial justice, was handcuffed and arrested on the front porch of his home by a Cambridge police sergeant. From that moment, through the media firestorm that followed, to the sharing of beers by Gates, the arresting officer and the President and Vice President of the United States, the event become representative of the tensions between white and black, police and civilian, and the privileged and non-privileged that remain in America.