This chronological discussion of the death penalty in Missouri covers those executed from 1803 through 2005. Sources include newspapers, county histories, prison records, Union Army records, pardon papers and appellate court cases. Chapters discuss such topics as the death penalty offenses of Indians and blacks; death sentences carried out by the military; lynchings; the gas chamber; the executions of rapists, juveniles, and women; pardons and commutations; appellate court reversals; and lethal injection.

This study examines crimes such as stealing, burglary, arson, rape and murder committed against and by slaves in Missouri, with most of the author's information coming from handwritten court records and newspapers.

From the beginning of French rule of Missouri in 1720 through this state's abolition of slavery in 1865, liberty was the goal of the vast majority of its enslaved people. This book presents account of the legal and physical obstacles that slaves faced in their quest for freedom and of the consequences suffered by persons who tried to help them.

In 1933, Genevieve Yost, Kansas State Historical Society cataloger, published a History of Lynching in Kansas. The present book is a development of that work, researched with the benefit of modern technology. The author locates 58 lynchings Yost missed and removes 19 from her list that for various reasons are not lynchings in Kansas.