| Abstrakt: |
Since 1608, nearly 20,000 judicial executions have been meted out in the United States by any number of legally prescribed methods. Until the late 1840s, death sentences were conducted in public venues - these conspicuous events were ceremonial in nature, rife with religious ritual and functioned both to demand contrition from the condemned as well as unite the community in virtue. With the advent of electrocution in 1890 and lethal gas in 1921, the religiously-informed public spectacle of punishment had all but vanished. Instead, executions were ideologically propelled by visions of mechanical innovation and technological 'civility' virtually unknown throughout the rest of the world. By 1977, following the adoption of lethal injection, executions in America shed their oftentimes unpredictable mechanized qualities and assumed a sterile, seemingly benign medical veneer. This analysis examines these three distinct ideological constructs as they have historically informed the dispensation of executions in American society. It is argued that through the "modernization" of capital punishment methodology, the social distance between society and offender is increasingly expanded. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
