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Televising Executions, Primetime "Live"?

NCJ Number
182459
Journal
Justice Professional Volume: 12 Dated: 1999 Pages: 191-207
Author(s)
Paul S. Leighton
Date Published
1999
Length
17 pages
Annotation
This article examines the pathways to a televised execution, including First Amendment issues, principles of open government and victims' rights.
Abstract
The article also reviews the potential for additional publicity about televised executions to create a deterrent effect, stimulate further violence and make celebrity criminal heroes. In addition, it questions whether a televised execution would cause abhorrence by showing the reality of an execution and its methods, or by informing people about capital punishment. Although a televised execution is not inevitable, exploration of the issue should continue, especially in two areas: (1) a better understanding of television as a form of communication to help clarify what an hour or so of programming around a televised execution would be like; and (2) an exhaustive analysis of the ways in which a televised execution could stimulate other violence in society. The question is how television and emerging high-technology mass media interact with the spectacle of violated bodies and whether a televised execution would merely be one more example of “death as theater for the living.” Notes, references, cases cited