It’s anything but clear what would happen if executions were shown on prime time. Would the public be horrified to see in living color what becomes of a human being put to death? Would they believe it to be kind, like a dog put to sleep. Would they be disappointed that there was no blood? Would it be the next top rated reality show?
David Lat and Zachary Shemtob were given space in the New York Times to opine on the subject of making executions public. Yes, the same David Lat whose kept a close eye on what was happening underneath judges robes.
It’s a horrible thing that Andrew DeYoung had to go through,” [Brian] Kammer said, “and it’s not for the public to see that.”
We respectfully disagree. Executions in the United States ought to be made public.
Not because they believe it will show the horrors of execution. Nor because they believe it’s likely to show how peaceful they look as they fade into oblivion. They just think it ought to be shown.
Cameras record legislative sessions and presidential debates, and courtrooms are allowing greater television access. When he was an Illinois state senator, President Obama successfully pressed for the videotaping of homicide interrogations and confessions. The most serious penalty of all surely demands equal if not greater scrutiny.
Why they would call the public broadcast scrutiny is unclear, given that it suggests a searching examination rather than a popcorn and beer opportunity. There is no comparison with legislative sessions or presidential debates, both of which involve some element of scrutiny, to the extent the viewing public is capable of it. Nor does comparison bare out for interrogations and confessions, which serve to provide a record so that the defense isn’t left to argue with a cop’s recollection at trial.
Ultimately the main opposition to our idea seems to flow from an unthinking disgust — a sense that public executions are archaic, noxious, even barbarous. Albert Camus related in his essay “Reflections on the Guillotine” that viewing executions turned him against capital punishment. The legal scholar John D. Bessler suggests that public executions might have the same effect on the public today; Sister Helen Prejean, the death penalty abolitionist, has urged just such a strategy.
That is not our view. We leave open the possibility that making executions public could strengthen support for them; undecided viewers might find them less disturbing than anticipated.
How the public will receive executions in their living room can be debated all day long, but no answer will be forthcoming and there may well be strong reactions going both ways. While the authors’ agnosticism toward the punishment itself is disappointing, if not incredible, their argument that it could just as easily bolster support as undermine it makes great sense.
As an opponent of the death penalty, my greatest fear is that the public will adore watching it on television, turning it into the greatest reality show ever with commercials rivaling the Super Bowl. I can see networks paying off the families of accused to turn away from appeals to keep the flow of warm bodies coming. I can see the public screaming for increasingly graphic methods of execution, because there just isn’t enough blood and guts in a three drug cocktail to juice up a kid who’s watched all the Jackass movies.
But this is real.
A democracy demands a citizenry as informed as possible about the costs and benefits of society’s ultimate punishment.
While true, a bit too simplistic. Watching a man die doesn’t inform the public about the costs and benefits of the death penalty. Whether it informs anyone of anything, if it’s just showing the public the insertion of an intravenous tube and a guy fading to black, is dubious. The problem is this doesn’t go anywhere near far enough to make it meaningful or informative. It would be one thing if we still used Old Smokey Sparky, but the current regimen is hardly designed for spectacular visuals. Television is a visual medium, and watching a three drug cocktail administered lacks a certain sizzle.
How about showing the life of the victim of the underlying crime? How about showing the public the life of the man about to be executed? Their families, their days, their upbringing and the problems. The hopes that died with both.
How about showing the investigation and trial, the means by which they got to the point where a needle was put into a man’s arm? How about the sentencing phase, where the mitigating evidence is presented to remind the jury that this is a human being before them? If this is all about transparency to enable the public in a democracy to be informed about how the sausage of execution is made, then let’s see the process from start to finish.
Besides, the network needs to fill at least an hour to milk the top commercial money from its advertisers, and the execution itself will take about as much time as announcing who will not be the next American Idol.
Discover more from Simple Justice
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
I’m not opposed to capital punishment in principle, but very much so in terms of practice. Thus, I would abolish it until courts improve to a level where innocent people do not receive capital verdicts against them. I realize that this means that capital punishment would be banned as perfection just isn’t going to happen on this planet, in this universe.
If ‘ten guilty persons’ should be freed rather than one innocent imprisoned, how many guilty should be spared death rather than one innocent be put to death?
BTW, I think you mean ‘Old Sparky’ above, not ‘Smokey’, though perhaps your vernacular differs.
Oops. You’re right, it’s Old Sparky, and I blew it. Thanks.
In my opinion, the idea of televising executions is wrong. This is because the medium allows alienation from the subject matter. The viewer is sitting at home, in cosy comfort. The convict is dying but there is no way to see it differing from the countless imaginary deaths regularly shown on the screen.
Instead, if executions should be made public, they should be done at a public place, say, in front of the state Supreme Court. This way, the death would become a social experience, detached from the everyday violence of the TV.
You mean like the way the Saudis do their beheadings in front of a mosque? The public is cordially invited, or at least advised of the time/place at the last minute. But these are untelevised events where even the use of a camera is frowned upon.
There’s a certain quaint integrity to the Saudis approach. If you’re going to be brutal, do it right.