Capital punishment as moral imperative: Pro-death-penalty discourse on the Internet

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Capital punishment as moral imperative: Pro-death-penalty discourse on the

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Capital punishment asmoral imperativePro-death-penalty discourse on the Internet

MONA LYNCHSan Jose State University, USA

AbstractCapital punishment plays a contradictory, emotional role in American social and politicalculture. In particular, the relationship between this punishment and variously situatedsocial actors suggests a complexity to contemporary penality that is not fully addressedby macro-level examinations of state punishment. In this article, I explore one venuewhere this relationship is evident: among pro-death penalty communications on theInternet. I examine these messages in part because they seem to reveal, rather explicitly,the affective, symbolic nature of popular support for capital punishment in the USA. Isuggest that the death penalty becomes an unproblematic, indeed, preferred method andsymbol of justice in this venue through a discursive process which reduces the under-lying social issues to a battle between good (i.e. the innocent victims) and evil (i.e. capitalmurderers). Once so reduced, no costs of capital punishment can outweigh the justiceachieved by state executions in the rhetoric of pro-death activists and pundits. Ultimatelythese communications reveal a set of sensibilities about crime and punishment whichseem to long for a detour from the civilizing path, in that the communicators seek todeny any interdependencies or empathies with those who commit violent crime, whileworking to unleash punishment from its institutional restraints.

Key Wordsculture of punishment • death penalty • discourse • Internet

INTRODUCTIONAlthough the global trend in recent years has been toward abolition of capital punish-ment – more and more nations are experimenting with moratoria or are outlawing thepractice completely – the majority of the American public and most elected stateand federal political figures have continued to embrace the death penalty with littleequivocation. Tensions over international human rights laws, issues raised by the recentlyestablished International Criminal Court, and the increasing influence of the European

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Union have all placed the punishment as a legal practice under intense scrutiny acrossthe globe, yet the United States appears impervious to such pressures (Prinzo, 1999;Schabas, 2000; United Nations, 2000; Hood, 2001).

Domestically, even in the face of recent well-publicized evidence that should shakethat solid foundation of support – the innocence discoveries and the images of livingmen, primarily minority men, being freed from death rows after being exonerated byDNA and other evidence; the continued, again well-publicized, disturbing findingsabout racial bias and general caprice that continues to infect the US capital punishmentsystem; the 2000 Gary Graham execution in Texas,1 which raises both these issues; theexecution of Karla Fay Tucker, another Texan who had garnered support from aroundthe world for her transformation from ice-pick murderess to repentant Christian ‘lady’and whose execution inspired unlikely public opposition from a number of well-knowndeath penalty proponents; and the ongoing fight against Mumia Abu-Jamal’s impend-ing execution in Pennsylvania – capital punishment endures. Other than a flurry ofactivity and media attention in the late 1990s which raised serious questions about thedeath penalty and its administration in the USA, majority public support continues tobe voiced in polls, death sentences continue to be handed down in more and more juris-dictions, and executions continue to occur at a rather accelerated pace, rivaling the paceof the 1940s, especially in Texas which is responsible for almost half of all the executionsin recent years (www.smu.edu).

Indeed, majority support among the American general public for capital punishmenthas been the norm for at least the past 65 years for which we have poll data on the issue(Ellsworth and Gross, 1994), and this support has especially intensified and ‘hardened’over the past quarter-century, when between two-thirds and four-fifths of Americanshave expressed general support for capital punishment in annual polls (Ellsworth andGross, 1994; Weinstein, 2000). The nature of this support, according to Ellsworth andGross (1994) is highly emotional and symbolic, rather than knowledge based (see also,Ellsworth and Ross, 1983). The bulk of American proponents are uninformed (and notvery interested in becoming informed) about the ins and outs of capital punishment asadministered (Ellsworth and Ross, 1983; Bohm et al., 1991), and their views appear tobe driven more and more by anger and retributive urges rather than by fear (Nolin,1997). Fewer Americans than ever justify their pro-death opinion on the basis that it isan effective policy measure to decrease crime (Ellsworth and Gross, 1994), and there isa growing body of research which suggests that white American support for capitalpunishment may be influenced by subtle or aversive racism (Aguirre and Baker, 1993;Barkan and Cohn, 1994; Russell, 1996; Lynch and Haney, 2000).

However, while the majority of Americans endorse capital punishment, most do notdo anything beyond voicing their opinion when asked. Since support for the death penaltyis the default position among the majority of the general American public (at least asmeasured in opinion polls), among myriad local, state, and federal political actors, andamong just about every other social group besides most academics and social justiceactivists, and there is no impending threat to its legal status, pro-capital punishment socialactivism in the USA has been sporadic, scarcely visible, and only very loosely organized.There is little need for a grassroots movement in support of the death penalty, since it isso comfortably positioned in US political, legal, and popular culture. In contrast, thereis a long history of anti-capital punishment social movement organizing and activity

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which has targeted state and federal legislative bodies and elected officials, state and federalappellate courts, and churches and religious leaders in their abolition efforts (Masur,1989; Galliher et al., 1992; Haines, 1996). Consequently, scholars and analysts whoexamine social movements and grassroots activity organized around the death penalty inthe USA have tended to focus on anti-death penalty movements, activism, and discourse(e.g. Meltsner, 1973; Schriver, 1990; Galliher et al., 1992; Haines, 1992, 1996), and therehas been little attention focused upon pro-death activism.

Nonetheless, there does exist a minority of American death penalty supporters whohave taken a much more activist role in promoting pro-capital punishment positions,legislation, and social or political action in recent years. And in some ways, the veryquestions being raised around the globe at this point in time, about innocence, aboutwhether capital punishment violates international human rights standards, and aboutbias and caprice in the application of the death penalty, appear to be inspiring an increasein pro-death discourse and activism emanating from the USA, especially on the Internet.Indeed, it appears that the rapid rise of the Internet as a uniquely powerful social move-ment tool (Fisher, 1998) has coincidentally proven to be key in establishing andadvancing contemporary pro-death activist efforts.

In this article, I examine the pro-death discursive activity on the World-Wide Web inan effort to reveal a set of subcultural sensibilities about capital punishment in the USA.This examination is the third in a series of analyses which aim to uncover the culturallife of capital punishment in contemporary US society.2 Building upon the culturalanalyses in the previous articles (Lynch, 2000a, 2000b), here I look at the nature andquality of American pro-death penalty sentiments expressed by those who activelypromote their positions on the Internet. I focus on these expressions in part because theyseem to reveal, rather explicitly, the emotional, symbolic nature of contemporary pro-death attitudes which prevail in the USA; therefore they may reveal some insight intowhy death penalty retention remains so uncritically accepted by the American publicand why pro-death discourse seems to resonate so well in political and popular realms.

The article proceeds as follows: (1) I historically and theoretically situate the status ofthe US death penalty within a sociological understanding of state punishment; (2) Ifollow with a discussion of my site of inquiry – the Internet – in order to explain whythis media outlet is a rich venue for exploring grassroots pro-death penalty social activismand for revealing a set of cultural sensibilities about capital punishment; (3) I categorizeand describe the types of pro-death penalty commentators and activists found in cyber-space; (4) I describe and analyze three major themes that emerge in these Internetcommunications. Within that discussion, I describe the kinds of remedial actions thatare advocated on the websites as measures to maintain and strengthen capital punish-ment in the USA; (5) I conclude with a discussion of how the pro-death rhetoric on theWeb both reinforces and reproduces, in exaggerated form, broader cultural narrativesabout crime and punishment, which make them powerful both rhetorically and instru-mentally when used for social and political activism.

US DEATH PENALTY AND LATE MODERN PENALITYIn a global context, the continued retention of the death penalty in the United Statesstands out as an anomaly, both historically and theoretically. Numerous scholarly

LYNCH Capital punishment as moral imperative

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accounts have documented how the use of capital punishment in western states has beenprogressively cleaned up and made ‘civilized’ (Elias, 1978) along the road to eventualabolition over the past several centuries. While state executions throughout Europe hadbeen theatrical events designed to celebrate sovereign power, by around the end ofthe 18th century, raucous public executions began to give way to less bloody, moreprivate and solemn ceremonies (Foucault, 1977; Spierenburg, 1984; Vaughan, 2000).Deliberate torture and bodily mutilation, which had been primary elements of thepunishment ritual, were generally abandoned and the pain and suffering of the con-demned became unpleasant by-products rather than goals of the killing (Spierenburg,1984). Over time, capital punishment was displaced in large part by the prison and asa result, the rate of death sentences and executions steadily dropped, eventually leadingto the abandonment of the practice in most western states by the mid- to late 20thcentury (Bowers, 1974; Foucault, 1977; Zimring and Hawkins, 1986; Hood, 1996,2001).

The United States seemed to be following a similar ‘civilizing’ pattern with respect tocapital punishment. After US independence, capital statutes were narrowed in mostjurisdictions, as the penitentiary emerged as a primary response to serious criminalviolations. Over the next century or so, state executions were both privatized and mademore ‘humane’ through technological advances that minimized the violence of thepunishment (Masur, 1989; Madow, 1995; Banner, 2000). During the early 20thcentury, a number of states experimented with total abolition, although those effortswere generally short-lived (Galliher et al., 1992), and by the 1950s, the national rate ofexecutions was in a pattern of steady decline. A decade later, executions had nearly ceasedand the US appeared to have entered a de facto abolitionist period (Meltsner, 1973). By1972, when the US Supreme Court declared capital punishment unconstitutional asadministered (Furman v. Georgia, 1972), there was a widespread sense that abolition hadarrived for good (Meltsner, 1973; Zimring and Hawkins, 1986).

Yet in a dramatic turnaround fueled by a surge in public and political outcry, capitalpunishment quickly regained a central place in the criminal justice regime in states acrossthe nation. Lawmakers overwhelmingly expressed their displeasure with the SupremeCourt by drafting new capital statutes and calling for judicial impeachment, and capitalpunishment became a litmus-test issue for voters in electing officials at all levels. Thatthe USA did not follow the predicted path to abolition is likely due to a combinationof unique political-structural conditions (i.e. the dual state–federal legal and politicalsystems; see Zimring and Hawkins, 1986), emerging concerns about violent crime andrelated social problems (Garland, 2001) and the exploitation of those concerns (Beckett,1997; Bright, 1998), and, as this article aims to explore, cultural ‘sensibilities’ (Garland,1990) which feed the contemporary American punitiveness in dealing with the problemof violent crime.

Even though most retentionist jurisdictions in USA have cleaned up the executionprocess in the post-Furman period through the adoption of lethal injection (thus in partin keeping with the longer-term civilizing trend), a strong case can be made that thedeath penalty in the contemporary public imagination and the sterile state administeredversion are two very different entities (Lynch, 2000a). As I have suggested before, capitalpunishment in its populist idealized form (but not necessarily as practiced)3 fulfills acomplex and contradictory emotional role among US proponents: it is both held up as


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a powerful, hard-hitting, physically destructive counterpunch aimed at the ‘bad guy,’ yetits violence is clearly distinguished from the violence of capital crime to make it anappropriately strong symbol of justice (Lynch, 2000b).4

Further, as with much of the broader victims rights and criminal justice reformmovements which have recently emerged as a powerful political force in the USA, thepopular demand for capital punishment over the past three decades reflects a skepticismabout, rather than a vote of confidence in, the law’s ability to deal effectively withcriminal wrong-doers. Popular and political demands for fewer legal protections incapital trials and appeals, swifter executions, and broader-reaching death penalty statutesall imply an underlying distrust of legal elites as arbiters of justice (Simon and Spaulding,1999). Today’s capital punishment is ideally the people’s tool of justice rather than anexclusive implement of sovereignty (Lynch, 2000b), and the populist appeal of capitalpunishment is often in direct opposition to the elements inherent in a rationalized,bureaucratized, managerial penality which is said to prevail in that it celebrates, in itsimagined form, the emotive and sensory elements of punishment (Lynch, 2000a, 2000b;Pratt, 2000). So while arguments have been made that penal policies and practices areincreasingly driven by an actuarial, risk-based logic, subordinating the moralistic, affec-tively rich elements of the prior disciplinary mode (see, for example, Feeley and Simon,1992), a number of trends at least in the USA – from the resurgence of chain gangs, therise of the boot camp, the reintroduction of shame in sentencing, and the persistence ofthe death penalty – point up the limits of such theories in fully explaining the culturalrole that state punishment fulfills in American society.

Thus, the death penalty’s contemporary cultural standing in the USA invites a lineof inquiry which examines its significance and meaning for differently situated socialgroups to fully understand its socio-cultural role (see, for example, Garland, 1990;Smith, 1996; Carrabine, 2000; Vaughan, 2000). That this period of late-modern penal-ity in particular is full of contradiction (O’Malley, 1999) and ambivalence (Vaughan,2000) has been noted by a number of theorists (see also Simon, 1995; Garland, 1996,2001), and the nature of contemporary state punishment is increasingly understood asan amalgamation of disparate elements. Clearly the continued use of capital punish-ment in the USA, complicated by the varied meanings it holds in the social, legal, penal,and political realms, suggests a comprehensive analysis of the death penalty that takesinto account cultural and subcultural norms, populist sensibilities, and other social arti-facts. In short, the kind of pro-death penalty expression and activism which I explorehere has the potential to reveal, if not a ‘decivilizing interruption’ (Pratt, 2000) inthe rationalized modern penal process, at least the complexity of the contemporaryAmerican penal state.

THE INTERNET AS A SITE OF DEATH PENALTY DISCOURSE ANDACTIVISMThe Internet has become a central mode of communication for grassroots socialmovement organizations and activist groups of all kinds (Fisher, 1998). As a result, it isan apt site for examining the social, cultural, and political life of activist individuals,subcultures, loosely formed coalitions, volunteer-based grassroots organizations, andgroups advocating social change. According to Fisher (1998: 158), social movement


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organizations at all levels have been among the most ‘aggressive’ entities to utilize theInternet as a tool, due to its low expense, potential geographic breadth of audience, andthe speed with which information can be transmitted to large numbers of recipients.Fisher (1998) uses a rumoring framework to explain how such groups use the Internetto define social problems, create meanings for ambiguous social and political circum-stances, then advocate solutions (generally outside the reliance on government) forthe self-defined problems. Because of its informality, ease of access, and relatively un-regulated nature, the ‘truth’ about social problems, on the Internet, can be stretchedmuch thinner than in more traditional public media/mass communication venues likenewspapers, television, and radio; as a result Internet communications function in amanner similar to rumors (Fisher, 1998).

A wide spectrum of grassroots social movements, from left/anarchist anti-corpora-tion activist groups (Leizerov, 2001; Owens and Palmer, 2001) to the extreme right‘Identity Christian,’ and related white supremacist movements (Burris et al., 2000;Sharpe, 2000) currently use the Internet as a central source of communication andcoalition building around their respective causes. Several scholars have suggested thatthere is an underlying unifying ethos of those who use the Internet for socialactivism/advocacy, despite the seemingly extreme contrast in political ideology amongthe myriad activist Internet utilizers. Because cyberspace is disproportionately popu-lated by an American, financially secure, white, male population – both in terms of usersand hosts – the very styles and modes of cyber-communication reflect this dominance.Thus, the prevailing interaction style on the Net is individualistic and competitive, andthe prevailing ‘cyberpolitical’ perspective is a form of anarchism/libertarianism whichseems to lend itself to an individualist activist stance on a variety of social issues (Jordan,2001). Further, the kinds of remediation suggested by Internet activists will tend to beforms of social action outside institutional or bureaucratic avenues (Fisher, 1998;Jordan, 2001).

And while numerous progressive movements do indeed utilize the Internet toadvance their causes, because the Internet is still an elite space populated by a demo-graphically skewed set of users (Lockard, 1997; Jordan, 2001), right-leaning to reaction-ary communications may resonate quite potently in this space, spawning subsequentactivism. As Burris et al.’s (2000) research on Internet use among white supremacistsseemed to indicate, the particular structure of the Internet serves greatly to facilitatedialogue, strengthen a sense of legitimacy and identity, and aid co-ordination amongdisparate elements of this extremist subculture in ways not feasible without such acommunication tool.

In the case of pro-death penalty communication and activism, the Internet appearsto play an important role in coalition building and constructing a network of like-minded individuals, groups, and organizations. The Web represents one of the fewcontemporary venues that allows for disparate and disconnected social entities to findeach other and link up over a common interest or concern. In the case of those whomove beyond mere support for capital punishment to a more activist stance, the Internetprovides an accessible and efficient means for making communicative connection, at thevery least. Here, individuals and groups with similar values can literally link up and buildcoalitions that aim to further their cause, at least through reinforcing their convictionin the necessity of capital punishment and in some cases through mobilizing various


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forms of social action for the cause. Thus, the Internet provides a rather unique windowinto contemporary pro-capital punishment sentiment, including how that sentiment istransformed into advocacy and action. Other than the occasional pro-death penaltycelebratory gatherings which take place outside prison gates on execution evenings, thesocial and communicative elements (and their ramifications) of capital punishmentadvocacy are hardly visible in any other setting.

CATEGORIES OF PRO-DEATH ACTIVIST-SUPPORTERSThere are somewhere around 2000 websites and web pages on the Internet that focuson the death penalty generally, the majority of which are centered on the American deathpenalty and most of those originate from the USA.5 These include pages of US correc-tions departments’ websites in death penalty jurisdictions which post descriptions andphotographs of the state’s methods, death row rosters, and execution procedures; sitesdevoted to historical methods of torture and execution; for-profit product marketingsites which sell death penalty novelties and products; pages posted by private individualswho have an interest in capital punishment; news articles and media coverage links;academic sites; non-profit advocacy group sites; and general ‘entertainment’ sites.

Within that larger category of death penalty web pages, there are more than 100 linksto pages and sites that are distinctly pro-capital punishment in stance, including infor-mational sites, posted papers and essays, articles and commentaries; activist sites;religious-oriented pages; and political commentary pages. Again these sites are primarilyfocused on the USA in terms of issues raised, examples used, advocated actions proposed,and so on. Even those sites created by those outside of the USA in large part examinethe American scene. For example, the recently created page, ‘The death penalty – adefence’ (w1.155.telia.com) promotes a Swedish pro-death penalty book which, accord-ing to the description on the site, predominantly examines the US issues, from the USSupreme Court’s rulings on constitutionality, to the claims of innocent people in theUSA being condemned to death to the issue of bias in administration.6

The kinds of individuals and groups who actively participate in pro-capital punish-ment Internet communications and activities generally fall into several main categories:victims rights advocates, religious proponents, and political proponents. Given thecentral message that undergirds pro-death penalty activism, it is not surprising that asignificant means by which people seem to express their pro-death sentiments andpromote political action on the death penalty is through a victim-identity route, oftencommunicated via a national or regional victims’ rights group’s site. The most promi-nent of these groups, and the most involved in pro-death penalty activities, is Justice forAll, a Texas-based national victims rights’ advocacy organization. Through its website,this group advocates tougher capital punishment laws along with legislation mandatingno parole for certain offenders, longer prison sentences generally, and victims’ partici-pation in criminal proceedings. The site also provides the group’s official endorsementsbased on candidates’ stances on criminal justice issues for local, regional, and nationalpolitical offices and judgeships (www.jfa.net). Not surprisingly, George W. Bush, whoenthusiastically presided over an unprecedented number of executions while Governorof Texas (1994–2000), was their presidential candidate of choice in 2000.

Justice for All has also established an independent page devoted entirely to the death


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penalty – Pro-death penalty.com (www.prodeathpenalty.com), as well as a secondvictims’ issues site – www.murdervictims.com, and a chat/message board site, Thepro-death penalty/justice NOW!! Message board (www.insidetheweb.com). The<www.prodeathpenalty.com> site offers the group’s proponent view on individual cases,like Gary Graham’s execution and the ‘other’ side to the Hurricane Carter7 story, andon current issues, such as ‘innocence’ and the death penalty (quotations theirs). Theyalso keep their audience informed about death penalty news, ongoing appeals in capitalcases, and upcoming executions around the nation.

Those website hosts who have come to the pro-death advocacy role through a victim-based route may also simply be individuals who are acting on behalf of a particular victim– generally a family member – such as Floridian Errol McInnes who created a pro-deathpenalty site (www.angelfire.com) in honor of his sister who was murdered in 1979. Athis site, he shares his personal experiences and opinions, provides links to other deathpenalty sites of interest, promotes activism in various forms, and invites feedback fromhis audience. Justice against crime talking (users.deltanet.com) – which is run by thefather of a murdered young woman, is sort of a hybrid – it is clearly primarily the workof George Cullins, the father of murdered Janette Cullins, who uses his victim status toframe his concerns. His site features a photograph of his smiling daughter when she wasalive, and his picture below hers, with the caption: ‘This father is fighting for her,’and is accompanied by instrumental musical soundtrack of a funeral march(users.deltanet.com). The message framing on the website suggests that Cullins isworking toward a more organized pro-death penalty organization in California whichadvocates for a wide range of political action and legislation – encouraging the Senateto pass the federal victims’ Bill of Rights,8 working toward the removal of judges whoare not tough enough on crime, working toward blocking death row inmates’ access tothe Internet so they cannot seek friendship or assistance through that route, and speed-ing up the pace of executions, especially in California.

Another variation on this theme are groups that have taken a single, often well-knowncase, with a specific victim figure, as their activist cause. For instance, there are severalsites honoring and promoting activism for Officer Daniel Faulkner, the murderedPhiladelphia police officer in the Mumia Abu-Jamal case (e.g. www.mastalk.com;www.danielfaulkner.com). These pages purport to offer the ‘truth’ about the MumiaAbu-Jamal case, provide links to anti-Mumia writings, and encourage a variety of socialaction, including making monetary donations, participating in Faulkner memorialevents and anti-Mumia protests, and purchasing Faulkner memorabilia to honor thevictim. In a slight variation of this form, at least one site takes as its cause the impeach-ment of a federal judge – John Nixon – specifically for his rulings on death penalty cases.The site, run by a Tennessee man, encourages letter-writing campaigns to federal repre-sentatives, maintains a petition which can be signed onto by visitors, and providesarticles and information on the federal judge and his decisions (www.rnet.net.impeach).

The second category of pro-death websites and pages includes those that have adistinctly religious focus. There are at least 14 pages created by religious proponents ofcapital punishment who communicate their views on the Internet. The pages tend to beposted by Christian ministries, individual pastors, or lay people who strongly identifywith fundamentalist Christians, and who use the Bible to support their positions. Forinstance, the True Branch Ministry, a conservative Christian Internet ministry, has a


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death penalty page captioned, ‘The death penalty is moral and just,’ which offers thebiblical ‘facts’ in support of capital punishment, and provides a question-and-answerformat for challenges (www.ezlink.com). Similarly, Bob Enyart, an on-line Christiancommentator, has a ‘chapter’ devoted to the death penalty and biblical support for it(www.enyart.com). Among the most extreme pro-death sentiments were those expressedby a Colorado minister, Pastor Peter J. Peters, of LaPorte Church of Christ and theaffiliated group, Scriptures for America Worldwide, who uses the Bible to justify hisbelief that the death penalty is an appropriate punishment for homosexuals(www.identity.org).

There are also a number of political commentators and pundits who periodically makepro-death arguments on various websites, as well. Some of these commentators are estab-lished media figures, such as conservative radio talk show host Ken Hamblin who has anInternet site – The Black Avenger Cave – through which he offers commentary on anumber of topics. Here, he has posted his views on the botched electrocution in Floridaof Allen ‘Tiny’ Davis in 1999 (www.hamblin.com), and other death penalty issues. Thenew American web opinion page (thenewamerican.com), which is an affiliate page of theultra-conservative political group the John Birch Society,9 includes a series of on-line pro-death articles, including ones about the ‘surgical effect of the death penalty’ and the moralobligation to use capital punishment as a show of respect for life. There are also a numberof posted pro-death editorials and opinions published in mainstream media outlets, suchas the Wall Street Journal and the National Review, which are available on the Internet,and which can be accessed through hyperlinks from a variety of pro-death sites.

Several conservative policy and non-profit legal groups, such as the National Centerfor Policy Analysis, and the Washington Legal Foundation also include pro-deathpolicy positions on their websites, and at least one such group, Criminal Justice LegalFoundation (www.cjlf.org), posts the legal briefs and synopses of the capital cases wherethey have advocated against capital defendants and for further-reaching and speedier exe-cutions.

There are also individual political commentators who are not officially affiliated withany media, political, or policy organizations who communicate on the topic via theInternet. For instance, Wesley Lowe, who has his own pro-capital punishment page,‘Wesley Lowe’s Pro Death Penalty Web Page’ (www.geocities.com/Area51), offers hisviews on a long list of death penalty topics, from racial bias in its administration to costsand deterrence. A Folsom, California correctional officer advocates on his personal pagefor mass, theatrical execution events for a wide range of offenders in the style of theancient Roman gladiatorial rituals (homepages.go.com)10 and David Bragdon posts histhoughts about capital punishment on his ‘Give Us LIBERTY and give them DEATH’page (www.geocities.com/CapitolHill). Often, these individuals will also espouse con-servative viewpoints on other issues, either on the same page, or through links to theirother web pages. For example, David Bragdon offers his audience links to his ‘con-servative political issues’ page which gives his opinions on welfare, redistricting, andeconomic regulation, among other topics. A slightly more organized and activist versionof this kind of political death penalty page is one based in Canada and advocates for thereturn of the death penalty to that nation. The site, Bring Back Capital Punishment(www.tpg1.com), is linked into a network of individuals’ ‘protest pages’ on a range ofissues and maintains a petition for visitors to sign to further the cause.


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A number of pro-death penalty academic papers are also posted on the Web, rangingfrom papers by high school and college students, to those by pro-death penalty scholarssuch as University of Utah law Professor Paul Cassell and Fordham University ProfessorErnest van den Haag. These papers, too, are made easily accessible through hyper-links from the bigger websites, like <prodeathpenalty.com>. Unlike the victim-basedindividuals and groups, and even to some extent, the religious groups, the pages postedby these commentators tend to be less activist in orientation, and often appear to bemore interested in simply broadcasting the creators’ positions and opinions.

PREVAILING MESSAGES FROM PRO-DEATH INTERNETACTIVISTS/COMMENTATORSGood versus evilAcross categories of activists/proponents, those who communicate their pro-deathpenalty thoughts and feelings on the Internet tend to sell their message through asimplified contrast between the innocent victim and the depraved killer. At all of thesites, the central issue relevant to capital punishment has been pared down to a classicgood guy/bad guy story, where the goodness, innocence, and value of all crime victimsrepresents the counterpoint to convicted murderers’ evilness and blameworthiness. Oncetransformed to this starkly simple contrast, all arguments about problems in adminis-tration, such as bias and caprice in sentencing, lack of instrumental value as crime policy,high costs, and even the risk of executing innocents can be significantly diminishedbecause the inherent value of the victim is so much higher than any person who endsup on death row. And their ultimate cause is presented in a similarly reductionistmanner, both implicitly and in explicit terms: that is, achieving justice is onlypossible by eradicating those responsible for the victims’ deaths. For instance, Christiancommentator Bob Enyart opens his ‘death penalty debate’ page with a graphic descrip-tion of Jeffrey Dahmer’s crimes (who killed 13 men and cannibalized their body parts),calls him ‘the cannibal,’ and implies that his own death at the hands of a fellow inmatein prison was an appropriate form of justice that the state had neglected to do itself(www.enyart.com).

Wesley Lowe’s ‘Abolitionist’s dictionary’ uses pro-death penalty satire to chastise ‘antis’who might get this good–evil dichotomy turned around, as illustrated by his definitionsof an ‘innocent person’ and ‘murder victims’:

innocent person \,in-o-sent ‘pers-en\ n: 1: anyone who is on death row 2 a: one who is onlyvalued and revered when he serves the purpose of keeping murderers alive b: invisible, intan-gible, and non-existent when he comes in the form of a murder victim or a repeat offence syn.see death row inmate; Gary Graham; Mumia Abdul Jamal.

murder victims \’mur-der ‘vic-tems\ n: 1: faceless, insignificant; statistics to be trivialized andignored syn see invisible men. (www.geocities.com/Area51)

Victim photographs are often used here as emblems to represent the innocence andgoodness of the victim, as at the ‘Justice against crime talking’ and the ‘Pro-deathpenalty.com’ sites. Both of these sites post photographs of smiling, happy, white femalesbefore they became murder victims – the first one a young woman, the second a young


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girl – as prominent visual symbols for their cause. The photograph of the young girl atthe Pro-death penalty.com site is framed by her name at the top, and this copy beneathher picture: ‘ “Jesus loves you, Jesus loves you” Said over and over to her rapist just beforehe murdered her’ (www.prodeathpenalty.com). Even Officer Daniel Faulkner’s photo-graph, in which he appears in his uniform, is used as the hotlink from the Pro-deathpenalty.com page to the Justice for Daniel Faulkner page.

In contrast, the idea that the capital convict might be humanized at all in broadersociety is repugnant to those who communicate through these pro-death sites. Thus,many sites advocated a set of strategies that aimed to eliminate any public portrayals ofthose on death row (or who have been executed) that were at all sympathetic. Forexample, the Benetton clothing company’s controversial advertising campaign whichfeatured photographs and brief biographies of American death row inmates is a commonobject of protest at the pro-death penalty sites, especially at the victims’ rights sites.Several sites summarize, in condemning terms, the facts about the ad campaign andabout the Italian-based company, and encourage various forms of social action againstthe company and its retail distributors. In a play on words, the company’s advertisingtag line, ‘United Colors of Benetton’ has been transformed into ‘United Killers ofBenetton’ at several sites as a short hand condemnation of the campaign (e.g.www.prodeathpenalty.com; www.angelfire.com; www.intellectualcapital.com).

Errol McInnes, under a section of his page captioned, ‘Screw Benetton,’ urges hisaudience not to wear Benetton clothing, and lauds the Sears, Roebuck department storechain for pulling Benetton products off store shelves. An on-line commentator fromthe Intellectual capital website characterizes Benetton as ‘one of the most perniciouscorporations on earth’ because of its ‘sickening’ attempt to ‘humanize’ convicted killersand ‘shove its views down our collective throats’ while ignoring the suffering of theirvictims (www.intellectualcapital.com). This page includes links to the Justice for All site,and to a prototype protest letter for those interested in downloading it and sending itto retail merchants who sell Benetton products.

A second target of pro-death Internet commentators and activists is other Internetsites which either invite the audience to communicate or otherwise become involved indeath row inmates’ cases/lives, as well as sites that promote the art and writing of deathrow inmates. Thus, Justice for All poses the question: ‘Are you offended by the sale ofmurder memorabilia on the Internet?’ with a hotlink to a page that allows the audienceto sign an on-line petition which expresses objection to the sale of ‘murderabilia’ (whichin their definition includes condemned inmate artwork) and asserts the signatories’conviction that, ‘murderers should not be able to peddle their wares for monetary gain,nor should outside agents, including eBay, profit from such items’ (www.jfa.net). ErrolMcInnes boasts on his site about how he hacked into a Florida death row inmate’s webpage, and added a touch of ‘truth’ to it. George Cullins, of Justice against crime talking,includes a denigrating image – a photograph of a donkey – as a link to a California deathrow inmate’s page. Below the link photograph, he chastises the man who made the pagepossible by suggesting he should put that energy into ensuring that, ‘these murderers areexecuted in the time frame specified by law, [so] this world could be a safer place’(users.deltanet.com).

In these communications, any measure of exposure to condemned convicts thatmight indicate their inherent humanity is intolerable and deserves contempt. Thus, a


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major thrust of these sites’ messages places the victim’s lost life and her humanity inthe center of the ‘cause,’ while major efforts are made to shut down any representationof death row inmates and even executed men that might humanize them. In doingso, those that face execution are repeatedly cast as nothing more than cold-blooded,evil, and not quite in the realm of human, thereby not worthy of consideration forhuman rights.

What miscarriages of justice?As a result, these portrayals work to further a second major thrust in the pro-deathmessages, which is that questions and concerns that have arisen recently about mis-carriages of justice in the administration of capital punishment are really not thattroubling. So, for example, several sites that address the Mumia Abu-Jamal case assertthat they can provide the ‘truth’ about the case, which in their assessments add upto no doubt about Abu-Jamal’s complete culpability (e.g. www.danielfaulkner.com;www.prodeathpenalty.com; www.mastalk.com). With these assurances, then, the onlyjust outcome in this case is an expedited execution of Abu-Jamal. The justice for DanielFaulkner site has a ‘Myths about Mumia’ section, which assures the audience thatAbu-Jamal supporters, ‘care little of his guilt. Rather they are intent on using him andhis case as tools to chip away at the Death Penalty in the United States.’ They expresshope that ‘once decent people have the truth about this case made available to them,they will stop the flow of blood money to Mumia Abu-Jamal and abandon him to thefate that he was sentenced to over 16 years ago’ (www.danielfaulkner.com).

A number of sites also offer critiques of the evidence which suggests that innocentpeople have been sent to death row and even executed in the USA. The strategy againis to first discount the degree of threat to the ideals of justice that this problem poses byminimizing its existence, and second, to contrast the minor potential loss of executingan innocent person with the harms done by convicted murderers, as Wesley Lowe doesin his section on the innocence issue:

As for the penal system accidentally executing an innocent person, I must point out that in thisimperfect world, citizens are required to take certain risks in exchange for relative safety. Afterall, far, far more innocent lives have been taken by convicted murderers than the supposedly23 innocents mistakenly executed this century. For instance, up to 13,000 American citizensare murdered each year by released and paroled criminals. These are the serious flaws in lifesentences that abolitionists prefer to trivialize to nonexistence. (www.geocities.com/Area51)

Racial disparities in capital case outcomes are also argued away through endorsementof more death sentences rather than the elimination of the punishment. A number ofsites address the disparity issue by citing the several studies that find no racial disparitiesin capital sentencing. The second point that is made – one suggested by Supreme CourtJustice Clarence Thomas, ironically in his consideration of Gary Graham’s habeaspetition (Graham v. Collins, 1993) – is that the solution is to execute more whites andmore killers of blacks through a mandatory sentencing scheme, rather than abolition ofthe problematic punishment:

For capital punishment to be applied equally to every criminal, rich or poor, black or white, itmust be mandatory for ALL capital cases. (Wesley Lowe, www.geocities.com/Area51)


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The death penalty is not racist and does not violate the cruel and unusual punishment clause.However, even if the death penalty were racist, the solution is to fix the discrimination not toend the punishment. One of the problems with the death penalty right now is that it is rarelyused that it often seems arbitrary. [My proposal] makes the death penalty the standard punish-ment for murder and removes the loopholes. This proposal would make a racist application ofthe death penalty nearly impossible. If the death penalty were to be the standard punishmentfor murder, and the rules deciding who received the death penalty were tightened, thedeath penalty would apply equally to the people of all races. (David Bragdon, www.geocities.com/CapitolHill)

Wesley Lowe also parodies concerns about racism in his Abolitionist’s dictionary:‘racism \’ras-sis-im\ n: 1: the sole reason why blacks and latinos can be found on deathrow’ (www.geocities.com/Area51). Even the Justice for Daniel Faulkner site, which isdevoted to the single case, provides a link to a pro-death penalty position on the racismissue (Justice for All’s assessment). The site creators suggest it is ‘necessary’ to make suchinformation available to those reading the Faulkner site (www.danielfaulkner.com).

Violence and executionsThe third major thrust in the pro-death argument is to distinguish executions fromillegal murders as forms of violent acts. This entails minimizing and even denying theviolent nature of executions, while playing up the violent acts of the condemned. Amajor strategy used by these sites is to not delve into the specifics of executions at all.The punishment is simply ‘the death penalty’ or ‘capital punishment’ or ‘the law,’ oreven a ‘surgical’ procedure to heal the body politic (www.newamerican.com), with littlediscussion of what that means. Its implementation is rarely referred to as the taking oflife; rather, it is ‘put into practice’ (www.geocities.com/CapitolHill); or, for Justiceagainst crime talking, it is ‘timely retribution’ (users.deltanet.com). Wesley Lowe makesan explicit argument against equating the two forms of death:

[T]he term murder is specifically defined in any dictionary as the UNLAWFUL killing of aperson with malice and aforethought. So logically, the word murder cannot be used to describeexecutions since the death penalty is the law. To do so is an obvious abuse of semantics. Secondof all, comparing executions to murders is like comparing incarcerating people to kidnappingor charging taxes and fines to extortion. There is a difference between violent crime andpunishment. (www.geocities.com/Area51)

Even when executions are revealed for their violence and physical destruction, thepro-death commentators work to discount the significance of those revelations. Themost telling contemporary example of this comes from the state of Florida where the(now retired) electric chair’s destructive capabilities were powerfully displayed in severalrecent dramatic instances, and which generated pro-death penalty commentary thatsought to downplay the troubling nature of these incidents. The first two times, in 1990and 1997, the chair made the news because the condemned men – Jesse Tafero in 1990and Pedro Medina in 1997 – were set on fire during their executions, causing flames toshoot from their heads. By 1997, after Medina’s botched electrocution, the state’s 74-year-old three-legged electric chair – ‘Old Sparky’ – appeared to be doomed as theprimary method in the state. There was significant press coverage of the incident which


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initially focused on the grotesqueness of the incident, but rather quickly shifted to reporthow medical and correctional experts had assessed the execution and found it to havebeen painless and humane, despite appearances to the contrary (Sarat, 1999).11

In the third incident, which generated a flurry of Internet activity, Allen Lee Davisbled profusely during his electrocution, an event which was documented by a set ofgraphic photographs. Davis, who weighed 344 pounds and suffered from a series ofmedical ailments, had been taking several medications that thinned his blood aroundthe time of his death, which caused him to bleed heavily during his electrocution.During the execution, a stream of blood ran down his leather face strap, staining thefront of his white shirt. While state authorities concluded that all the blood letting wasthe result of a simple nose-bleed, Department of Corrections staff photographed Daviswhile he was still strapped in the chair to document the irregularity of his execution(Schneider, 1999). The three photographs taken – a close-up of Davis’s purplish facewith the bloodied, too tight face strap still in place, a full body shot of him strapped inthe chair, and a tighter shot of the bloodstains on his face, chest, and shirt – wereobtained by next in line for execution, Thomas Provenzano, who presented them asevidence of the chair’s cruel and unusual nature in an unsuccessful challenge to themethod. The photographs were then attached to Florida Supreme Court Justice LeanderShaw’s dissent in that case which upheld the use of the electric chair, reportedly in orderto demonstrate dramatically the violence of the method (Hallifax, 1999). The opinionand these attachments were posted on the Internet, where they subsequently took on alife of their own (Lynch, 2000b).

The photos appeared on a number of pro-death penalty political punditry/commen-tary sites where they were used as illustrations for commentary about the case or thedeath penalty generally. In this context, contrary to Justice Shaw’s intent, they becameevidence of the relatively non-violent nature of even this form of execution. So, forexample, Ken Hamblin posted full-size versions of the bloody pictures on his Blackavenger cave site, introducing them with this copy:

The following are pictures of ALAN [sic] LEE ‘TINY’ DAVIS, who went to the electric chairon 7/8/99 after being convicted of murdering a pregnant woman and her daughters in 1982.Liberals are calling [sic] his execution ‘cruel.’ I think what he did to his victims was crueland perhaps the crime scene photos should have been run with Tiny’s execution.(www.hamblin.com)

Errol McInnes also posted the photographs on his site, making them accessiblethrough a pro-death penalty comic graphic hotlink. In McInnes’s narrative accompani-ment, like Hamblin’s and other commentators, the brutality of the execution isdiscounted through the graphic comparison to Davis’s crimes and the deaths enduredby his victims. He also shifts some of the blame for the ugliness of the execution ontoDavis himself – it was his obesity that caused the face strap problem, rather than thestate’s improper punishment practices:12

JUST HOW COMFORTABLE IS A CONDEMNED INMMATE [sic] SUPPOSED TO BE?

When the face mask was strapped into place, some of Davis’ features were scrunched up as aresult of Davis being obese. It was speculated that when the mask was placed on Mr. Davis’


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face, it was placed too tightly, resulting in partial asphyxiation. However, it has been establishedthat Mr. Davis died with no undue pain or suffering. Far from the comparison of the unduepain and suffering that his victims, A three month pregnant woman, and two little girls,suffered.

I found it necessary to post these pictures to compare Mr Davis’ death with that of his three. . . victims. Mr Davis died after being stunned by the administration of 2000 volts, literallyerasing his ability to feel pain, or to be cognizant of what was happening. In comparison, thepictures of his victims was so gruesome that neither I or anyone else would even considerposting them. Davis tied up his victims, shot them, and beat the 5 year old girl so hard thather brains had begun to expel from her skull. In Comparison, Mr Davis’ nosebleed is far fromgruesome, or cruel or unusual punishment. (www.angelfire.com)

So even in this case, where the execution’s violence is quite visible to anyone who viewsthe photographs, the analysts are able to reduce its significance through this contrastwith the innocent victims, and the violent deaths that they suffered.

DISCUSSIONThat pro-death penalty sites on the Internet relate a rather consistent set of rhetoricaldiscourse which simplify the issue of capital punishment in the manner described abovesuggests several things. First, the quality and homogeneity of the pro-death Internetdiscourse, and the ‘sensibilities’ (Garland, 1990) about punishment and its functionreflected on these websites, reveal a broader set of powerful, affectively provocativenarratives about those who do violence, and about those harmed by violence, whichdemand punitive vengeance, like state executions, for justice to be appropriately served.The overriding narrative is constructed to make death as a punishment not only morallypalatable, but essential to fulfill justice. Capital punishment is represented as an un-problematic method and symbol of justice by reducing the underlying social problemto a battle between good (an innocent victim) and evil (the capital murderer). Once soreduced, no costs of capital punishment can outweigh the justice achieved by stateexecutions in the rhetoric of pro-death activists and pundits. It is an approach that isseeped in emotion, especially in the representations of the innocent victim, which usephotos, moving verbal phrasings, and even dramatic musical scores to reinforce itsmessage, while it simultaneously downplays the violence of execution and denies thehuman agency of the condemned.13

The perspectives articulated are not mere extremist rantings by fringe pro-deathpenalty activists; rather the communicators utilize and reiterate, albeit in exaggeratedform at times, well-established themes from popular and political culture about crimeand punishment. Indeed, the core of these messages is quite consonant with popularAmerican thinking on crime and punishment. Research on capital juries, for instance,indicates that the very kind of dehumanizing of the defendant and elevation of the inno-cent victim that underlies these pro-death narratives also plays a role in the penaltydecision-making process in capital cases (Haney, 1997a, 1997b), perhaps facilitated byprosecutors who use the good/evil, innocence/depravity dichotomies to sell deathsentences in capital trials (Sarat, 1993; Lynch and Haney, 1999). Even the current USSupreme Court, which has deliberately played a role in the expedition of executions since


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the 1980s (Burt, 1987), engages in juxtaposing the brutality of capital crimes and theinnocence of their victims with the protective and fair procedures afforded the capitaldefendant before being sentenced to death, even when the details of the crime have nolegal relevance to the case issues (Harris, 1991; Howarth, 1994; Sarat, 1997).

These themes are also the same as ones which are repeated consistently throughoutpopular US culture – in mainstream action films and cop television shows, in newsreports, in publicized political campaign talk, in magazine features, and so on (see,for example, Sparks, 1992; Anderson, 1995; Surette, 1996; Beckett, 1997; Beckett andSasson, 2000). The typology of a capital crime, as constructed in these narratives,exemplifies the kind of violence that we imagine as the worst of social acts; one involv-ing an innocent victim or victims, and an evil individual wrongdoer who deserves nomercy (Sarat, 1993; Haney, 1995). This typology represents, ‘the dominant culturalmotif for representing violence and victimization’ (Sarat, 1993: 52), and is transmittedregularly through various media in a reinforcing loop. Because of its relative simplicity,the pro-death ‘story’ reflected here in many ways parallels the abbreviated, simplifiedrepresentations of criminality and violence found in mass media crime stories, whetherthey are news reports of actual incidents or dramatic entertainment (Haney andManzolati, 1992; Sparks, 1992; Cavender and Bond-Maupin, 1993; Haney, 1995,1997b).

The pro-death cause gains its persuasive strength by reducing the narrative to aschematic tale of good versus evil with little contextual background. Just as root causesof crime, for instance, are rarely addressed in crime news stories (Chermack, 1994;Barlow et al., 1995), and crime coverage on television disproportionately focuses uponrelatively uncommon, brutal, and bizarre acts of violence (Schlesinger et al., 1991;Cavender and Bond-Maupin, 1993; Tunnell, 1998), these Internet communicatorsdisregard the underlying factors leading to the criminal behavior. By mimicking thesimplistic, decontextualized story lines about crime presented in mass media, thesecommunications encourage swift and frequent executions as the best response tocriminals and their violence, and social action to thwart any roadblocks obstructingthat goal.

Second, the nature of the discourse and advocacy reveals how the structure of theInternet facilitates the definition, legitimation, and amplification of issues by myriadindividuals and groups. Because networking among disparate and far-flung social entitiesis so easy on the Internet, like-minded site hosts can not only communicate to each otherwith ease but also can literally connect to each other through the simple process of estab-lishing hotlinks. So in this context, for instance, New Yorker Wesley Lowe’s pro-deathsite is not only made known but is made accessible with a mere mouse click to thoseexploring Texas-based Justice for All’s web page. Those visiting the Clark County,Indiana prosecuting attorneys’ office page are a hotlink away from pro-death web sourcesas disparate as the Canadian site, Bring back capital punishment (www.tpg1.com), topostings of proponent religious papers by writers from around the globe. A consequenceof this structural net is that connected sites provide audience, affirmation, and messagereinforcement for themselves and their linked sites. It also undoubtedly works tohomogenize the message to some degree if by no other process than repetition. In theend, what may have been scattered lone voices trying to project the pro-death messageto small localized audiences in any other setting, becomes on the Internet an entity in


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itself – a web of proponents who give weight to their cause through the linkages andwho further their goals as a coalition, whether by referring visitors to linked sites, encour-aging their audience to support the activist missions of related Internet sites or simplyby adding material or addressing issues from other sites on their own pages.

This strength is ultimately reflected in the kinds of social activism promoted at manysites. These individuals and groups call for similar forms of political pressure to furthertheir goals – providing the names of representatives who should be contacted about theissues, providing endorsements for elections, pushing for the removal of unfavorablelegal and political figures, providing and distributing petitions, and so on – in a mannerthat would not be possible in other media venues. And this strategy has been effective.Particularly in the case of the victims’ rights activists, these kinds of activities have beenextremely influential in shaping a variety of criminal justice policies throughout thenation including capital punishment legislation, and has contributed to significantrestructuring of basic criminal procedure in recent years (Dubber, 1999). The verynature of criminal justice debate, rulings by state and federal judges, campaign strategiesby political candidates at all levels have been informed by the very form of victims’rights discourse that is found at these sites, including the equating of the death penaltywith justice (Harris, 1991; Daley, 1994; Anderson, 1995). Even the action againstprivate entities, like the Benetton clothing manufacturer, has been influential. Theconcerted movement against the company, co-ordinated to some degree via the Internetactivism, resulted in huge losses in US sales, state-wide boycotts, broken retail contracts,and at least one lawsuit stemming from the death row ad campaign (Carroll, 2000;Jury, 2001).

In the end, though, the communications themselves and the forms of promotedactivism imply the communicators’ lack of confidence in the state’s justice machinery.The communicators are for the most part situated outside of the system, looking in witha critical eye, and in their collective narrative, social change from outside is necessary toachieve the overriding goal of removing institutional impediments to the flow of execu-tions and vesting the power to punish in victims and others who have the common senseto deplore murderers. Thus, in terms of the contemporary state of capital punishmentin the USA, the pro-death communicators/activists reveal a set of sensibilities thatopposes the dispassionate, bureaucratic, pro-defendant death penalty which they en-vision as the status quo, and which long for a more affectively rich, moralistically infusedritual of lethal condemnation. In this sense, then, these sensibilities may indicate at leasta longing for a detour from the civilizing path, in that the communicators seek to denyany interdependencies or empathies with those who commit violent crime, whileworking to unleash punishment from its institutional restraints.

The ultimate consequence of this sort of discourse and activism is that the de-humanization of the condemned (and criminals generally) coupled with the denial ofinappropriate violence in executions which prevails in these sites’ narratives works toportray the use of capital punishment in the United States as irrelevant to human rightsconsiderations. In this construction, those subject to the punishment are hardly human,and the punishment itself is merely a lawful penal procedure too infrequently engagedin after too many legal procedural protections have been made available to the accusedand convicted. Therefore, the moral issues and concerns about injustices in implemen-tation, along with the ‘rights’ questions which are raised internationally about the use


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of the death penalty as state punishment are muted in the USA by the very form ofdiscourse engaged in by these pro-death penalty Internet communicators.

AcknowledgementsAn earlier version of this article was presented at the ‘Towards the global abolition ofcapital punishment?’ international workshop hosted by the Max-Planck Institute forForeign and International Penal Law in Freiburg and the Otto-Suhr-Institute forPolitical Science/Free University Berlin, and will be published in Christian Boulanger,Vera Heyes and Philip Hanfling (eds) Zur aktualität der todesstrafe interdisziplinäre undglobale perspektiven, Berlin: Berlin Verlag Arno Spitz, 2nd edition, forthcoming 2001. Iwould like to thank Christian Boulanger, Timothy Kaufman-Osborn, Richard Sparksand the anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments and suggestions on earlierdrafts of this article.

Notes1 Gary Graham, an African-American, was sentenced to death for a robbery-murder

for which he was convicted of committing when he was 17. Graham was convictedon the basis of a single eyewitness account; no physical evidence tied him to themurder. After his sentencing, a number of witnesses surfaced who indicated thatGraham could not have been the killer, and issues regarding the quality of his legalrepresentation and the role of racism in his arrest and prosecution came out. He wasexecuted in June 2000, during the heat of the Bush presidential campaign. See NewYorker (1993) for a succinct account of this case.

2 The first of these articles (Lynch, 2000a) examines the state execution process inArizona, revealing an undercurrent of emotional discontent among front-lineexecution participants and the public which suggests some limits to risk-based expla-nations of penal processes, at least in the case of legal executions. The second article(Lynch, 2000b) examines the ‘life’ of the electric chair in cyberspace, and uncoversa prevailing narrative of executions as ideally corporal, somewhat violent eventsrather than ‘humane’ eliminations.

3 In contrast to its image, the death penalty as actually carried out today provides littleemotional fulfillment on any level (Lynch, 2000a, 2000b).

4 It no doubt fills a corollary emotional role for many death penalty opponents as well.See, for example, Prejean (1993) and Haines (1996).

5 The Clark County, Indiana prosecuting attorneys’ office provides links to ‘1000+’death penalty sites, divided into 38 distinct categories (everything from ‘Deathpenalty humor and curiosity’ to ‘Race and class bias’). In the most recent update ofthe Clark County prosecutor’s page (July, 2001), the site listed 1934 links in total;however many catalogued pages were subcategories of previously listed sites. Forexample, the listing includes the ‘Wesley Lowe’s pro-death penalty page’ page underthe category of ‘Pro-death penalty sites’, then it includes several listings of his specificsubpages under the ‘Pro and con arguments’ category. I conducted a number ofInternet searches using commercial search engines (i.e. Yahoo, Alta Vista, etc.) andyielded numerous additional sites and pages which focused upon the death penaltyin some form.

6 The emphasis on the American situation is likely due to a combination of the skewed


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demographics of Internet hosts and users (Jordan, 2001) and the internationalcuriosity about and interest in the continued US retention (Girling, 2001; Hood,2001).

7 In 1966, Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter, an up-and-coming African-American prize-fighter, was wrongly convicted and imprisoned for murdering three white men. Hewas released 19 years later when his conviction was overturned by a federal US judgeon the basis of serious constitutional errors in his prior court proceedings. His lifestory was dramatized in the 1999 Hollywood film, Hurricane, starring DenzelWashington.

8 This was a 2000 Bill co-sponsored by Arizona Republican senator John Kyl andCalifornia Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein which would amend the USConstitution to authorize certain rights for crime victims, including the right totestify at sentencing hearings, attend all court proceedings, and receive notificationof perpetrators’ release dates. Vice President Gore proposed a similar federal lawduring his presidential campaign. At present no such Bill has been passed at thefederal level, but numerous states have enacted such legislation.

9 The John Birch Society was founded in 1958 on the heels of the anti-Communistfrenzy in the USA with a primary mission of fighting communism, and other threatsto American ‘freedom,’ including the threat posed by the civil rights movement. Thegroup has many ideological and practical ties to the US Religious Right, and is nowworking toward getting the USA to pull out of the United Nations.

10 This page has since been removed from the World-Wide Web.11 Four doctors who wrote a report on the Medina death concluded that the victim

died a quick death with no evidence of pain or suffering, despite the foot-tall flamethat leaped from his head during the process (Wallsten, 1997).

12 Other commentaries also noted his obesity – many described how he had to bewheeled into the death chamber, and at least one commented on how he had almostpurposely ballooned up in prison, even over-indulging at his last meal, thus high-lighting his role in causing his own death to be botched.

13 Although a surprising number of those who broadcast their positions deny that theyare emotional at all, and insist that they represent the logical, fact-based side of theissue. Indeed, they accuse the other side of relying on emotion. This is evident inthe ‘Justice against crime talking’ site’s statement of purpose:

THIS WILL BE AN EVER CHANGING SOURCE OF INFORMATION DEALINGWITH THE JUDICIAL PATH, IN ACCOMPLISHING A SENTENCE OF DEATH,BY ANY ONE OF THE STATES THAT HAVE SUCH A PENALTY. WE DEAL INCALIFORNIA ISSUES MOSTLY BUT ARE OPEN TO ALL STATES. HOPEFULLYWE WILL BE ABLE TO SHOW THE TRUTH BY FACTUAL INFORMATION ANDNO VERBAL RHETORIC DEALING IN THE EMOTIONAL SIDE OF THE ISSUE.WHEN YOU GET EMOTIONAL, IT IS LIKE A THERMOMETER, THERE AREVARIOUS DEGREES ON THE ISSUE. BUT WITH FACTS, THE ISSUE IS CLOSERTO BLACK OR WHITE WITH VERY LITTLE GRAY AREA.

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http://w1.155.telia.com/~u15509119/ny_sida_1.htmhttp://www.angelfire.com/fl3/floridajustice/http://www.cjlf.orghttp://www.clarkprosecutor.org/html/links/dplinks.htmhttp://www.danielfaulkner.com/http://www.enyart.com/writings/death.htmlhttp://www.ezlink.com/~trbranch/CI.htmhttp://www.geocities.com/Area51/Capsule/2698/cp.htmlhttp://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/5258/deathpen.htmlhttp://www.hamblin.com/plate.main/ex.html.http://www.identity.org/files/homo.htmlhttp://www.insidetheweb.com/messageboard/mbs.cgi/mb29120http://www.intellectualcapital.com/issues/issue343/item8114.asphttp://www.jfa.net/http://www.mastalk.com/Faulkner.htmlhttp://www.murdervictims.com/http://www.prodeathpenalty.com/http://www.rnet.net.impeach/http://www.smu.edu/~deathpen/http://www.tpg1.com/protest/federal/cp/cpmain.html

MONA LYNCH is an Assistant Professor in the Administration of Justice Department at San Jose State Uni-

versity. She is interested in examining how cultural and subcultural elements of contemporary punishment fit

with theoretical understandings of penal processes.


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Documents

Capital punishment as moral imperative: Pro-death-penalty discourse on the Internet