History Lecturer Kathleen Cairns Publishes Fourth Book

Kathleen A. Cairns, history lecturer at Cal Poly, has just published her fourth book, "Proof of Guilt: Barbara Graham and the Politics of Executing Women in America" through University of Nebraska Press. The book uses Graham's case as a touchstone to explore the anti-death penalty movement of the late 1950s and '60s. A "femme fatale" during her 1953 Los Angeles murder trial, Graham had morphed into the victim of a punitive and arbitrary justice system by the time of her 1955 execution at San Quentin.

The 1958 film "I Want to Live" completed her transformation, depicting her as innocent of murder. Abolitionists kept Graham in the forefront of public consciousness until the 1960s, when they homed in on a winning strategy -- mounting constitutional challenges against the death penalty. States have always been reluctant to execute women. Cairns argues that Graham's case illustrated the perils of choosing the wrong ones to receive the "ultimate penalty."