Capital punishment as moral imperative
| Author | Mona Lynch |
| DOI | 10.1177/14624740222228554 |
| Published date | 01 April 2002 |
| Date | 01 April 2002 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Capital punishment as
moral imperative
Pro-death-penalty discourse on the Internet
MONA LYNCH
San Jose State University, USA
Abstract
Capital punishment plays a contradictory, emotional role in American social and political
culture. In particular, the relationship between this punishment and variously situated
social actors suggests a complexity to contemporary penality that is not fully addressed
by macro-level examinations of state punishment. In this article, I explore one venue
where this relationship is evident: among pro-death penalty communications on the
Internet. 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. I
suggest that the death penalty becomes an unproblematic, indeed, preferred method and
symbol 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. capital
murderers). Once so reduced, no costs of capital punishment can outweigh the justice
achieved by state executions in the rhetoric of pro-death activists and pundits. Ultimately
these communications reveal a set of sensibilities about crime and punishment which
seem to long for a detour from the civilizing path, in that the communicators seek to
deny any interdependencies or empathies with those who commit violent crime, while
working to unleash punishment from its institutional restraints.
Key Wor ds
culture of punishment • death penalty • discourse • Internet
INTRODUCTION
Although 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 the
practice completely – the majority of the American public and most elected state
and federal political figures have continued to embrace the death penalty with little
equivocation. Tensions over international human rights laws, issues raised by the recently
established 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 across
the 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 shake
that solid foundation of support – the innocence discoveries and the images of living
men, primarily minority men, being freed from death rows after being exonerated by
DNA and other evidence; the continued, again well-publicized, disturbing findings
about racial bias and general caprice that continues to infect the US capital punishment
system; the 2000 Gary Graham execution in Texas,1which raises both these issues; the
execution of Karla Fay Tucker, another Texan who had garnered support from around
the world for her transformation from ice-pick murderess to repentant Christian ‘lady’
and whose execution inspired unlikely public opposition from a number of well-known
death penalty proponents; and the ongoing fight against Mumia Abu-Jamal’s impend-
ing execution in Pennsylvania – capital punishment endures. Other than a flurry of
activity and media attention in the late 1990s which raised serious questions about the
death penalty and its administration in the USA, majority public support continues to
be 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 pace
of the 1940s, especially in Texas which is responsible for almost half of all the executions
in recent years (www.smu.edu).
Indeed, majority support among the American general public for capital punishment
has 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 Americans
have expressed general support for capital punishment in annual polls (Ellsworth and
Gross, 1994; Weinstein, 2000). The nature of this support, according to Ellsworth and
Gross (1994) is highly emotional and symbolic, rather than knowledge based (see also,
Ellsworth and Ross, 1983). The bulk of American proponents are uninformed (and not
very interested in becoming informed) about the ins and outs of capital punishment as
administered (Ellsworth and Ross, 1983; Bohm et al., 1991), and their views appear to
be 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 is
an effective policy measure to decrease crime (Ellsworth and Gross, 1994), and there is
a growing body of research which suggests that white American support for capital
punishment 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 not
do anything beyond voicing their opinion when asked. Since support for the death penalty
is the default position among the majority of the general American public (at least as
measured in opinion polls), among myriad local, state, and federal political actors, and
among just about every other social group besides most academics and social justice
activists, and there is no impending threat to its legal status, pro-capital punishment social
activism 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 is
so comfortably positioned in US political, legal, and popular culture. In contrast, there
is a long history of anti-capital punishment social movement organizing and activity
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