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PietroSignoracci-FirstPaper 4 - 25 Mar 2008 - Main.EbenMoglen
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A Functional Analysis of Audiences to Executions | | | The above explains why, if a state desires to conduct executions, it would prefer to do so before a private audience. But the state does not select the members of this small audience at random; what remains is to determine why the state chooses the audience members it does and what functions those members serve. By far the most important witnesses in terms of overall utility to the state are the family members of the victims of the condemned. In their response to the execution, these observers can be placed into three categories—those who, post-execution, find the state’s punishment to be too much; those who consider it to be too little; and those who think it just right.
In the first case, family members might find the execution to be too severe and consequently refuse to sanction the state's performance of it. This reaction undermines the process and therefore must be dealt with by the state, which adapts or abandons its method of killing. Just as outcries from public audiences in part contributed to the state’s decision to switch to private audiences, the disapproval of private audience members has contributed to the evolution in execution techniques (i.e., progression from noose to chair to chamber to needle). The state continually adapts until it creates primarily positive reactions, such as those exhibited by audience members in the next two categories. | |
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< | Despite the pride it takes in not having a strong public demand for open executions, the state certainly would not mind even zealous supporters of its capital punishment procedure. If anyone, the survivors of the victims would be the bloodthirsty champions of state-killing (so long as the victim is not Kitty Dukakis). So much so, in fact, that some walk away unsatisfied, echoing critiques that capital punishment can be disproportionately small to the capital crime (e.g., Timothy McVeigh? ’s boast of “168 to 1”). | >
> | Despite the pride it takes in not having a strong public demand for open executions, the state certainly would not mind even zealous supporters of its capital punishment procedure. If anyone, the survivors of the victims would be the bloodthirsty champions of state-killing (so long as the victim is not Kitty Dukakis). So much so, in fact, that some walk away unsatisfied, echoing critiques that capital punishment can be disproportionately small to the capital crime (e.g., Timothy McVeigh’s boast of “168 to 1”). | | | In other cases, especially where the victims are few and did not endure tremendous suffering, surviving family members might experience satisfaction or resolution. This result would coincide with the functional analysis of state executions put forth by Rene Girard in Violence and the Sacred. According to Girard, the state employs capital punishment so as to terminate the potentially catastrophic cycle of reciprocal vengeance that would naturally follow the first violent act. But by absorbing private vengeance and transforming it into a legitimized, public form, the state robs the original would-be avenger of a certain satisfaction that would come with personally fulfilling what he considers a fundamental obligation. Even if this desire is purely subconscious, it can be at least partially satiated through the act of witnessing the killing, and vigilantism is avoided—in other words, those who might take the law into their own hands are instead permitted to take it in with their own eyes.
Thus, every state execution witnessed by an assenting private audience is a relegitimization of the state’s process of killing, and the state improves the odds of assent by making the victims’ family members the most important portion of the audience.
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- I think this essay promised more than it delivered. In the end, what was there to say about the selected audience at executions? The authorities invite the politically-necessary constituencies, including the press, and they try to control the image to avoid either provocation or delegitimation. This is neither surprising nor meaningless, and could perhaps generate more insight. But you are not seeking new conceptions, it appears, and are content to stop with predictable reinforcements of concepts oft repeated.
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