DOCSLIB.ORG

The Cultural Life of Capital Punishment in the United States, 1945-Present

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Cultural Life of Capital Punishment in the United States, 1945-Present Condemned To Be Free: The Cultural Life of Capital Punishment in the United States, 1945-Present A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Daniel LaChance IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Elaine Tyler May, Advisor January 2011 © Daniel LaChance 2011 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Writing a dissertation in the humanities can be a lonely experience. I am grateful for the intellectual and emotional support that I‘ve enjoyed from family, friends, mentors, and colleagues. Colleagues in my cohort in the Department of American Studies provided stimulating first-year discussions that have influenced how I‘ve approached this topic: Adam Bahner, Alex Mendoza, Alex Urquhart, and Scott Shoemaker made me think about culture in different ways. I‘ve greatly benefited from the feedback provided on my work by members of Elaine and Lary May‘s monthly dissertation writing group. Jason Stahl and Jeff Manuel, in particular, responded generously and helpfully to my work in its earlier stages. Beyond the University of Minnesota, I‘ve benefited from colleagues in the fields of history and law and society who have provided me with invaluable advice and help. Paul Kaplan, now an Assistant Professor at California State University, San Diego, and a collaborator on a future project, was several steps ahead of me in graduate school and wrote a fantastic dissertation about the hegemony of individualism in the practice of capital punishment in the United States that supported and inspired my own thinking on the topic: his influence is widely present here. Rob Owen, an appellate attorney specializing in capital cases and Professor of Law at the University of Texas, Austin, patiently answered my questions about Texas‘s legal system, provided me with important practical knowledge and advice, and welcomed me into his home for dinner while I was completing my research in Austin. Lastly, colleagues at the Hurst Summer Institute in Legal History at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, provided important perspectives on my work as I began the process of revision. Two fellow graduate students at the University of Minnesota have had the greatest influence on me throughout the process of writing this dissertation. Caley Horan and Ryan Murphy read every chapter of this dissertation and knew exactly what I needed at a given moment, whether it be irreverent exasperation at the absurdities of graduate student life or probing questions about the foundations of my ideas. I can‘t think of two better people with whom to have shared the highs and lows of dissertation writing. My mentors at the University of Minnesota have shaped this dissertation in ways too numerous to count. I was incredibly fortunate to land in courses taught by Joachim Savelsberg and Barbara Welke my first semester in graduate school. I‘ve been continually grateful for their rigor, diligence, scholarship, honesty, and generosity. Thanks to Lary May for modeling an intrinsic love for ideas and intellectual open-mindedness. Thanks to Ellen Messer-Davidow, i whose incisive critiques of my writing have improved it. Finally, and most importantly, thanks to my advisor Elaine Tyler May, whose work proved so foundational for my own in ways I have only recently come to appreciate fully. In both the small things (responding to an e-mail with lightning-quick speed) and the big things (strategizing about how to situate myself in academia), Elaine has been a mentor, model, and friend. I‘d like to thank the staff at the various archives and clerks‘ offices in California, Nebraska, Texas, and Wisconsin. Tony Black, librarian at the Texas State Archives and Library; Rhonda Noll and Colleen Clark, clerical workers at the Harris County District Clerk‘s Office; and clerical staff at the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in Austin all responded to multiple requests to locate records that proved invaluable to my research. Thanks, too, to the 38 former jurors and 11 members of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty who allowed me to interview them in Texas. Thanks to colleagues at Riverdale Country School who have provided cheerleading and professional support for me, particularly in the final few months of my work on this project, especially Mike Sclafani, Ricky Lapidus, Melissa Miness, Priscilla Morales, Tom Gatch, Ellen Baker, Dwight Vidale, Kent Kildahl, and Susan Katz, who proofread the defense draft. In the world beyond academia, Andy Grover, Jeff Hnilicka, Kevan Choset, Greg Penta, Rachel Buchberger, Aundi Hammer, Dana Bontemps, Nick Eigen, and Dan Weiner have supported me in innumerable ways. Thanks to them. Generous fellowship support from various sources gave me the time and resources I needed to complete this work. Thanks to the donors who have underwritten the Graduate Student Fellowship, the Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, The Stout Wallace Fellowship, The Erickson Legal History Fellowship, the Mulford Q. Sibley Fellowship, and the Hurst Summer Institute in Legal History. Professional development funding from the Department of American Studies at the University of Minnesota and Riverdale Country School helped me to travel to conferences and defrayed research expenses. Finally, I thank my parents, John and Karen LaChance, whose love and support have meant the world to me. For nearly thirty years, my Dad, a criminal defense attorney in Massachusetts, has defended the rights of the accused, many who committed crimes that inspired widespread horror and disgust. His empathy, grace, and zealous advocacy for the least popular (and often least fortunate) among us are awe-inspiring. This dissertation is for him. ii ABSTRACT This dissertation examines the waning of capital punishment in the immediate post-World War II period and its resurgence in the 1980s and 1990s. Some scholars understand the revival of the death penalty in the United States as part of a socially conservative backlash in a society undergoing immense social change. Qualifying and building upon these accounts, I argue that the migration of Americans‘ sense of political community away from the public sphere and a concomitant resurgence of individualism in the post-World War II period played an under-examined role in the growth of the American demand for capital punishment. State killing, I show, was compatible with a cultural consensus that social problems could be solved only by individual acts of will and not by large-scale social engineering. The revival of the death penalty reflected Americans‘ discomfort with the way that modern, utilitarian approaches to punishment, which peaked in the years after World War II, failed to take individuals seriously, prioritizing social goals over individual autonomy. In this context, capital punishment legitimized, rather than simply masked, the state‘s withdrawal of its claim to being the central provider of social, economic, and personal security. And it denied, rather than endorsed, the state‘s role as a dispenser of traditional morality. Contradictory understandings of the role of the killing state as normatively and descriptively strong and weak worked, moreover, to sustain the practice of capital punishment in the United States. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ―When Bundy Buckles Up‖ Page 1 Chapter One Before the Backlash: Lethal Punishment in an Age of Rehabilitation Page 22 Chapter Two State of Confusion: Strong and Weak State Visions of the Death Penalty Since 1977 Page 66 Chapter Three Reinforcing Death: The Functional Effects of Contradictory Visions of the State Page 102 Chapter Four Reflecting Life: Capital Punishment as an Indicator of a New Political Landscape Page 141 Bibliography Page 207 Appendix Scope and Methodology Page 212 iv INTRODUCTION ―WHEN BUNDY BUCKLES UP‖ In the late 1980s, Florida residents vented frustration at their state‘s new mandatory seatbelt law by affixing bumper stickers to their cars that read, ―I‘ll buckle up when Bundy buckles up.‖ The stickers linked the state‘s attempts to regulate their behavior in cars with its failure to execute convicted serial killer Theodore Bundy, who had been sitting on the state‘s death row for eight years.1 Their sneering protest of the state‘s new seatbelt law imagined a state that was wasting its time criminalizing the acts of decent people while failing miserably to incapacitate permanently those who posed real danger to the public. ―Our state has its priorities backwards,‖ this bumper sticker announced: Florida was intruding on the right of law-abiding folks to use their property in ways that harmed no one but themselves, while failing to intrude enough on the rights of a serial killer. In just seven words, the Bundy bumper sticker expresses a larger, statistically significant correlation that has puzzled scholars of the death penalty: in recent decades, many Americans‘ support for the death penalty has been directly proportional to their sense of alienation from government.2 Why, scholars have wondered, would Americans who express the highest degree of distrust in their government be so willing to grant it power over life and death? 1 Kirk Makin, ―Bundy Makes Final Bid to Beat Chair,‖ The Globe and Mail (Canada), April 11, 1988. 2 Steven F. Messner, Eric P. Baumer, and Richard Rosenfeld, ―Distrust of Government, the Vigilante Tradition, and Support for Capital Punishment,‖ Law and Society Review 40 (2006): 559-590. 1 This contradiction inhabits the cultural life of capital punishment in the contemporary United States. On the one hand, the death penalty symbolizes the state‘s strength, its rightful role as guarantor of order and security. On the other hand, executions symbolize the state‘s weakness: they are the only way we can be sure that, in an age of parole and probation, dangerous criminals stay off the streets for good. But the contradiction is not simply symbolic. More than ever before, executions resemble medical procedures conducted by trained professionals.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Desiring Dexter: the Pangs and Pleasures of Serial Killer Body Technique
    Desiring Dexter: The pangs and pleasures of serial killer body technique Author Green, Stephanie Published 2012 Journal Title Continuum DOI https://doi.org/10.1080/10304312.2012.698037 Copyright Statement © 2012 Taylor & Francis. This is an electronic version of an article published in Continuum, Volume 26, Issue 4, 2012, Pages 579-588. Continuum is available online at: http:// www.tandfonline.com with the open URL of your article. Downloaded from http://hdl.handle.net/10072/48836 Griffith Research Online https://research-repository.griffith.edu.au Desiring Dexter: the pangs and pleasures of serial killer body technique Stephanie Green1 School of Humanities, Griffith University, Gold Coast, Australia Abstract The television series Dexter uses the figure of appealing monstrosity to unfold troubled relationships between corporeality, spectatorship and desire. Through a plastic-wrapped display of body horror, lightly veiled by suburban romance, Dexter turns its audience on to the consuming sensations of blood, death and dismemberment while simultaneously alluding to its own narrative and ethical contradictions. The excitations of Dexter are thus encapsulated within a tension between form and content as ambivalent and eroticised desire; both for heroic transgression and narrative resolution. Arguably, however, it is Dexter’s execution of a carefully developed serial killer body technique which makes this series so compelling. Through an examination of Dexter and his plotted body moves, this paper explores the representations of intimacy and murderous identity in this contemporary example of domestic screen horror entertainment. Keywords: Dexter, body-technique, desire, crime television, horror 1 [email protected] Launched in 2006, the television drama series Dexter has been a ratings record- breaker for its network producers (Showtime, CBS 2007-2011).
    [Show full text]
  • III MEMETIC REFRAMING Christian Patterson's Redheaded Peckerwood
    III MEMETIC REFRAMING Christian Patterson’s Redheaded Peckerwood In December 1957, Charles Starkweather and his girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate embarked on a murder spree that shocked the US population. And even today, more than sixty years later, the so-called ‘Starkweather case’ keeps haunting the North American people as part of the country’s collective imagination. This situation is testified to by Christian Patterson’s evolving photobook Redheaded Peckerwood (2011, 2012, 2013),404 which contains a visually diverse selection of photographs, each of which points suggestively to the Starkweather case.405 The historical murder spree is undoubtedly Redheaded Peckerwood’s narrative centre. However, I argue that the criminal case merely serves a reflection on how ‘frames’, which are sets of conventions that govern the representation of historical events, are disseminated in culture.406 That argument, I claim, is conditioned by a memetic principle of rereading that allows the frame to appear multiple times according to the meme’s emergent logic of imitation through variation. ‘Memes’, according to Richard Dawkins’s initial definition of the phenomenon, are units of cultural transmission that propagate themselves in ever-changing form by leaping from brain to brain, often via magazines, computers, movies, and other technological platforms.407 Humans cannot entirely control these processes,408 and I argue that the same might be said of the process of rereading Redheaded Peckerwood, since it is partially governed by algorithms. The smartphone revolution around 2010 introduces the so-called ‘post-digital’ era, that is, the situation wherein humans no longer control the digital realm, since portable digital devices allow for a permanent extension of subjectivity across the Internet.409 Within this contemporary context, I contend that humans are habituated to meeting ambiguity and elusiveness with immediate online searches.
    [Show full text]
  • 3423Am Charles Raymond Starkweather
    NEBRASKA STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY COLLECTION RECORD Film RG3423.AM: Starkweather, Charles Raymond, 1938-1959 Papers: 1958-1993 Lincoln, Lancaster County, Neb: Criminal Size: 1.0 cu. ft.; 1 roll of microfilm BACKGROUND NOTE Charles R. Starkweather was convicted in the murder of Robert Jensen of Bennet, Nebraska in 1958. Although Starkweather claimed involvement in a total of eleven murders between January 21 and January 29, 1958, he was convicted and sentenced to death for only the first degree murder of Jensen and for murder while in the perpetration of robbery. Starkweather’s girlfriend, Caril Fugate, received a life sentence as an accomplice in the Jensen murder, although she claimed that she was Starkweather’s hostage during the week-long murder spree. Beginning with the murders of Fugate’s mother, stepfather, and infant half-sister, the two allegedly killed seven others in Lancaster County, Nebraska, and one other person during their escape attempt in Wyoming. Starkweather, after numerous appeals and stays of execution, was electrocuted on June 25, 1959. Fugate spent eighteen years in the Women’s Reformatory at York, Nebraska before being paroled in 1976. Upon parole, Fugate was given a new identity and an out- of-state residence. SCOPE AND CONTENT NOTE The collection consists of manuscript materials arranged in two series: 1) Research materials for “Murder in the Heartland,” and 2) Newspaper clippings, 1958-1973. The materials relate to the murders committed by Charles Starkweather and Caril Fugate in January, 1958. Series 1 – Research materials for “Murder in the Heartland,” consists entirely of photocopies of research materials compiled for the ABC-TV miniseries, “Murder in the Heartland,” (1993).
    [Show full text]
  • PONDER REVIEW Volume 2 • Issue 2 Fall 2018 PONDER REVIEW
    PONDER REVIEW Volume 2 • Issue 2 Fall 2018 PONDER REVIEW Editors Jacqueline Clowney, Madelain Garcia, Elizabeth Hines, William Kessler, Lauren Ostrander, Daniel Putney, Lauren Rhoades, Thomas Richardson, Bailey Hammond Robertson, Maggie Sanderson Advisor Brandy Wilson Ponder Review is published bi-annually by the low-residency MFA program in creative writing at Mississippi University for Women. The views expressed herein are those of the writers, not the editors or Mississippi University for Women. Ponder Review considers new media, visual art, creative nonfiction, fiction, flash fiction, and poetry twice a year from December 15 – March 15 and June 15 – September 15. No previously published material will be accepted. See our website for full submission guidelines: PonderReview.com Single copies are $12 and subscriptions are $20 per year for addresses within the United States. Foreign postage is additional. For submissions and subscriptions use Submittable: ponderreview.submittable.com All rights revert to the authors after publication; however, we reserve the right to reprint online and in anthologies of the magazine. For the rights to perform plays or to reprint any work published in Ponder Review, please contact the author. As a courtesy, the editors are willing to assist in establishing contact whenever possible. We request Ponder Review be credited with initial publication. Queries or other correspondence may be emailed to: [email protected]. Queries and subscriptions sent by mail should be addressed to: The Editors, Ponder Review, MFA Creative Writing, 1100 College St., W-1634, Columbus, MS 39701. ISSN 2572-6455 (print) ISSN 2572-6463 (online) Copyright © 2018 Mississippi University for Women Cover Art by Seungkyung Oh • “Cactus Woman” A Note to Readers As we at Ponder Review close out our second year of publishing thought-provoking pieces of literature, art, and new media, we continue to discuss our identity as a magazine.
    [Show full text]
  • Reel Hope: Literature and the Utopian Function of Adaptation
    REEL HOPE: LITERATURE AND THE UTOPIAN FUNCTION OF ADAPTATION A dissertation submitted to Kent State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Alexander Charles Oliver Hall August, 2013 Dissertation written by Alexander Charles Oliver Hall B.A. Miami University, USA, 2007 M.A. University of Arkansas, USA, 2009 Ph.D. Kent State University, USA, 2013 Approved by ___________________________________, Chair, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Willie J. Harrell, Jr. Associate Professor of English ___________________________________, Member, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Babacar M’Baye, Associate Professor of English ___________________________________, Member, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Donald M. Hassler, Professor of English ___________________________________, Member, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Paul Haridakis, Professor of Communication Studies ___________________________________, Member, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Leonne Hudson, Associate Professor of History Accepted by ___________________________________, Chair, Department of English Robert W. Trogdon ___________________________________, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences Raymond A. Craig ii TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION: THE UTOPIAN FUNCTION OF ADAPTATION . 1 I. THE UTOPIAN FUNCTION OF DISSEMINATION . 20 1. JOSÉ SARAMAGO’S BLINDNESS GETS THE MEIRELLES TREATMENT 2. “HARRISON BERGERON” MEETS CHANDLER TUTTLE IN 2081 3. LINDSAY’S DEXTER COMES TO THE SMALL SCREEN II. THE UTOPIAN FUNCTION OF REACTIVATION . 70 1. CUARÓN’S THE CHILDREN OF MEN INDICTS IMMIGRATION POLICY 2. ALAN BALL REACTIVATES DEAD UNTIL DARK THROUGH LGBT LENS 3. SAGAL EXPOSES COLD WAR FEARS VIA THE OMEGA MAN III. THE UTOPIAN FUNCTION OF FRAMING . .. 116 1. LIBMAN AND WILLIAMS BUILD A BRAVE NEW WORLD 2. BRUCE PITTMAN BRINGS “HARRISON BERGERON” TO SHOWTIME 3. JOFFÉ’S INFAMOUS ADAPTATION OF THE SCARLET LETTER CONCLUSION . 156 Notes .
    [Show full text]
  • The Healing Power of Self Narratives: the Diary of a Young Girl and Dexter
    Pamukkale Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Dergisi Sayı 25/1,2016, Sayfa 390-399 THE HEALING POWER OF SELF NARRATIVES: THE DIARY OF A YOUNG GIRL AND DEXTER Şeyda SİVRİOĞLU∗,Bhekumusa Pascal ZWANE∗∗ Abstract This paper investigates self-narratives and their characteristics by demonstrating how they are a viable tool for engaging in psychotherapy. This is achieved by examining the narratives of The Diary of a Young Girl (Frank, 1947) and Dexter (Showtime Networks, 2006-2013) in light of Carl Jung’s Four Stages of Psychotherapy (Jung, 1966) to show that the aforementioned narratives generally conform to these four stages. By aligning Jung’s four stages of psychotherapy with the respective self-narratives, and discussing other therapeutic characteristics of self-narratives, it can be concluded that the exploration of self-awareness within self-narratives results in this narrative form being an effective means of therapy. Keywords: Self narratives, Psychotherapy, Identity, Psychoanalysis, The Diary of a Young Girl, Dexter. ÖZ ANLATILARIN İYİLEŞTİRİCİ GÜCÜ: THE DIARY OF A YOUNG GIRL AND DEXTER Özet Bu çalışma, öz anlatı ve onun özelliklerinin psikoterapide nasıl uygulanabilir bir araç olarak kullanıldığını inceler. Carl Jung’un “Psikoterapinin Dört Evresi” (Jung, 1966) kuramsal çerçevesinde, The Diary of a Young Girl (Frank, 1947) ve Dexter’ın (Showtime Networks, 2006-2013) nasıl bu dört evreye uygun olduğu ortaya konulmuştur. Bu çalışmada, adı geçen öz anlatılarla Jung’ın psikanalizde anlattığı dört evreyi eşleştirerek, öz anlatılardaki kişisel farkındalık arayışının etkili bir terapi yöntemi olarak kullanıldığı sonucuna varılmıştır. Anahtar Kelimeler: Öz anlatı, Psikoterapi, Kimlik, Psikanaliz, The Diary of a Young Girl, Dexter. ∗ Asst. Prof.
    [Show full text]
  • Social Construction of a Nebraska Execution Jeremy Harris Lipschultz University of Nebraska at Omaha, [email protected]
    University of Nebraska at Omaha DigitalCommons@UNO Communication Faculty Publications School of Communication Winter 1998 Local TV News and the Death Penalty: Social Construction of a Nebraska Execution Jeremy Harris Lipschultz University of Nebraska at Omaha, [email protected] Michael L. Hilt University of Nebraska at Omaha, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/commfacpub Part of the Communication Commons Recommended Citation Lipschultz, Jeremy Harris and Hilt, Michael L., "Local TV News and the Death Penalty: Social Construction of a Nebraska Execution" (1998). Communication Faculty Publications. 53. https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/commfacpub/53 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the School of Communication at DigitalCommons@UNO. It has been accepted for inclusion in Communication Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@UNO. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Table of Contents Multimedia: Replacing the Broadcast Curriculum William Christ . 1 Professional Organizations and Mass Communication Faculty Judy Oskam . 7 Managing Anarchy: A Prescription for College Radio JeffWilkinson ................................................ 14 Local TV News and the Death Penalty: Social Constructions of a Nebraska Execution Jeremy H . Lipshultz & Michael L. Hilt . 21 A Video Production Assignment that Embodies "The Real World to Classroom Connection" Ann D. Jabro ................................................. 31 Three Faculty Evaluate Their Summer Experiences of NATPE Faculty Development Grants Dom Caristi, David Bradbury & Lena Zhang ........................ 40 Reviews of Instructional Materials . 45 (_) artwork by Brian Murph~· ocal TV News and the Death Penalty: Social Construction of a Nebraska Execution Jeremy H. Lipschultz and Michael L. Hilt University of Nebraska at Omaha This paper focused on the September 2, 1994 execution of Harold Lamont "Walkin' Willie" Otey.
    [Show full text]
  • Otey Dies in Electric Chair Execution Is the First in Nebraska Since Charles Starkweather Received Death Penalty in 1959 16 Years in Courts Now Over
    Omaha World Herald (Nebraska) September 2, 1994 Friday LINCOLN EDITION Otey Dies in Electric Chair Execution Is the First in Nebraska since Charles Starkweather Received Death Penalty in 1959 16 Years in Courts Now Over BYLINE: LESLIE BOELLSTORFF, WORLD-HERALD BUREAU SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1 LENGTH: 1656 words DATELINE: Lincoln Harold Lamont Otey was electrocuted early this morning when Nebraska carried out its first execution in 35 years. His last hope for a reprieve vanished at 7:55 p.m. Thursday when the U.S. Supreme Court, for the eighth time in 16 years of appeals, declined to take up his case. Otey, 43, who raped and killed Jane McManus, 26, of Omaha in 1977, was the first person executed in Nebraska since serial killer Charles Starkweather in 1959. Shortly after midnight at the Nebraska State Penitentiary, Otey was strapped into the same electric chair used to kill Starkweather. After the Supreme Court rejected the last appeal, Vince Powers, one of five attorneys who have represented Otey, said he knew of no further action that could be taken in Otey's behalf. "I think it's over," Powers said. "It's a disappointment. I don't like a human being being killed with my tax dollars. "When I wake up tomorrow morning, Nebraska will not only have drive-by shootings, but sit-down killings. We've made the big time." J. Kirk Brown, assistant Nebraska attorney general, told reporters about 8:30 p.m. that the Attorney General's Office remained ready in case Otey's lawyers filed a last-minute appeal.
    [Show full text]
  • Mass Media and the Death Penalty
    University of Nebraska at Omaha DigitalCommons@UNO Communication Faculty Publications School of Communication Spring 1999 Mass Media and the Death Penalty: Social Construction of Three Nebraska Executions Jeremy Harris Lipschultz University of Nebraska at Omaha, [email protected] Michael L. Hilt University of Nebraska at Omaha, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/commfacpub Part of the Mass Communication Commons, Public Policy Commons, and the Social Policy Commons Recommended Citation Lipschultz, Jeremy Harris and Hilt, Michael L., "Mass Media and the Death Penalty: Social Construction of Three Nebraska Executions" (1999). Communication Faculty Publications. 66. https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/commfacpub/66 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the School of Communication at DigitalCommons@UNO. It has been accepted for inclusion in Communication Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@UNO. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Mass Media and the Death Penalty: Social Construction of Three Nebraska Executions By Jeremy H. Lipschultz and Michael L. Hilt Abstract: This research analyzes local TV news coverage of three Nebraska executions in the 1990s, the first in the state since 1959. The three Nebraska executions allow us to see mass media coverage of the death penalty from four perspectives: 1) media organization routines, journalistic beliefs, and how source selection affected the content; 2) justice was portrayed through a consonant set of social symbols; 3) the public support for the death penalty in this country may have led journalists to avoid tough questioning of public officials; 4) the resulting coverage was a social construction of reality that might influence future public opinion.
    [Show full text]
  • Premios Y Nominaciones De Dexter
    PREMIOS Y NOMINACIONES DE DEXTER Premio Año Categoría/Galardonado Resultado Mejor Actor en Programa de TV Ganó Michael C. Hall Mejor Actor Secundario en Programa de TV Nominado James Remar 2007 Mejor Actriz Secundaria en Programa de TV Nominada Jennifer Carpenter Mejor Serie de TV de Cable Nominado Dexter Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films, USA Mejor Actor en TV Nominado Michael C. Hall Mejor Actor Secundario en TV Nominado Erik King 2008 Mejor Actriz Secundaria en TV Nominada Jennifer Carpenter Mejor Actriz Secundaria en TV Nominada Jaime Murray Mejor Serie de TV de Cable Ganó BayHarborButcher.WordPress.com Dexter Mejor Actor Invitado en Serie de TV Ganó Jimmy Smits Mejor Actriz Secundaria en TV Ganó Jennifer Carpenter 2009 Mejor Actor en TV Nominado Michael C. Hall Mejor Serie de TV de Cable Nominado Dexter Mejor Programa de TV del Año 2006 Ganó Dexter American Film Institute Mejor Programa de TV del Año 2007 Ganó Dexter Mejor Actriz Secundaria - TV, Mini-Serie o Película para TV 2007 Nominada Lauren Vélez ALMA Awards Mejor Actriz Secundaria en Serie de TV de Drama 2008 Nominada Lauren Vélez Mejor Edición en Serie de Una Hora para TV no Comercial American Cinema Editors, USA 2008 Stewart Schill Nominado Por el episodio "It's Alive" Mejor Serie de TV Internacional John Goldwyn BAFTA Awards 2009 Sara Colleton Nominados Clyde Phillips Robert Lloyd Lewis BayHarborButcher.WordPress.com Mejor Casting para Episodio de Drama 2007 Shawn Dawson Nominados Lori Wyman (Florida casting) Casting Society of America, USA Mejor Logro en Casting - Serie de TV - Drama 2008 Nominado Shawn Dawson Mejor Logro en Edición de Sonido para Serie de TV Roger Pietschmann (production mixer) Cinema Audio Society, USA 2009 Elmo Ponsdomenech (re-recording mixer) Nominados Kevin Roache (re-recording mixer) Por el episodio "Turning Biminese" Mejor Guión de Episodio de TV 2007 Clyde Phillips Nominado Por el episodio "Crocodile" Edgar Allan Poe Awards Mejor Guión de Episodio de TV 2008 Nominado Daniel Cerone Mejor Introducción de una Serie (más información) Eric S.
    [Show full text]
  • Omaha World Herald (Nebraska)
    Omaha World Herald (Nebraska) January 20, 1992, Monday METRO EDITION Death Penalty Foes Watch Support Slip Death Penalty Chronology BYLINE: Jason Gertzen SOURCE: World-Herald Bureau SECTION: ;NEWS; Pg. 1; LENGTH: 1300 words DATELINE: Lincoln State Sen. Ernie Chambers of Omaha and some other lawmakers said public pressure is the reason that Chamber's bill to abolish the death penalty has lost support. The bill started out with 25 co-sponsors, enough to pass a bill. But now, as few as 17 support it. Intense public debate has been generated by a series of appeals filed on behalf of death row inmate Harold Lamont Otey. "The people who are trying to get Otey into the chair have made the difference," Chambers said. Chambers' Legislative Bill 327 is to be considered again this week. However, Speaker of the Legislature Dennis Baack and most other lawmakers questioned said the bill's chances of passage are slim. The measure would change the state's maximum sentence for first-degree murder from death to life in prison without possibility of parole. The bill acknowledges that the sentences would be subject to the constitutional authority of the State Pardons Board to grant clemency. "In my opinion, it will be defeated," said Baack, who supports the measure.Now Opposed Sens. Dan Lynch of Omaha and Stan Schellpeper of Stanton indicated in recent interviews that they probably would vote against the bill. Four other co-sponsors of the bill - Sens. Eric Will and Brad Ashford of Omaha, Sen. Jennie Robak of Columbus and Sen. Arlene Nelson of Grand Island - have said they either would oppose the bill or are undecided 1 about the issue.
    [Show full text]
  • Are We Close? Christian Patterson – Redheaded Peckerwood
    Are We Close? Christian Patterson – Redheaded Peckerwood The title of this book raises problems that rebound upon what Christian Patterson is doing in this latest very stylish MACK publication, designed in part, I canʼt help but think, to feed the expanding market for that new bourgeois fetish and collectorʼs item, the photobook (it is already out of print). "Redheaded Peckerwood" is a derogatory term used through the mid- twentieth century by Southern African Americans and upper class whites to describe poor rural whites. It is akin to ʻredneckʼ. Wikipediaʼs extensive entry on "Peckerwood" also mentions an affinity with the abusive term "white trash." The subject of this book concerns the infamous crimes of two poor rural white kids, 19 year old Charles Starkweather and 14 year old Caril Ann Fugate. Starkweather first killed a gas station attendant in December 1957, then went on to slaughter Fugate's mother, step-father and baby sister in January 1958. Despite having witnessed the murder of her family, Fugate accompanied him as he drove across Nebraska and Wyoming on a spree of robberies and murders that claimed seven more lives, before they were arrested. Starkweather was executed in the electric chair in 1959, Fugate was sentenced to life but released on parole in 1976, and now lives in Michigan under an assumed name. We do not get all this information about the crime in this book, which remains deliberately elliptic and only gives us information in fragments. The terrible events of 1958 are now part of American mythology, perpetuated by a succession of films drawing on the killings: notably Terence Malick's Badlands, Oliver Stoneʼs Natural Born Killers and David Lynchʼs Wild at Heart.
    [Show full text]