HISTORY: ​“Gruesome Spectacles: The Cultural Reception of Botched Executions in America”

Recently pub­lished his­tor­i­cal research led by Professor Austin Sarat (pic­tured) of Amherst College exam­ines the way grue­some exe­cu­tions were report­ed in the media in the late 19^th and ear­ly 20^th cen­turies. Prof. Sarat’s study found that news­pa­pers gen­er­al­ly pre­sent­ed two com­pet­ing nar­ra­tives in their cov­er­age: ​“a sen­sa­tion­al­ist nar­ra­tive, which played up the grue­some­ness of botched execution[s], and an oppos­ing, recu­per­a­tive nar­ra­tive, which sought to dif­fer­en­ti­ate [the] law’s vio­lence from vio­lence out­side the law.” (Article abstract) Gruesome exe­cu­tions were put into a larg­er con­text of an order­ly and jus­ti­fied pun­ishm­net: ​“They sit­u­at­ed such exe­cu­tions with­in a frame­work that jus­ti­fied cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment as the prop­er way to avenge vio­lent crimes. Problems were attrib­uted to unavoid­able human errors or tech­no­log­i­cal break­downs, and exe­cu­tions, even when they became grue­some spec­ta­cles, gen­er­al­ly did not seem to inflict undue suf­fer­ing on the con­demned.” The report, Gruesome Spectacles: The Cultural Reception of Botched Executions in America, reviewed news­pa­per accounts of botched exe­cu­tions between 1890 and 1920, and was pub­lished in inau­gur­al issue of the British Journal of American Legal Studies. Read full text of report.

(A. Sarat, et al., ​“Gruesome Spectacles: The Cultural Reception of Botched Executions in America, 1890−1920,” 1 British Journal of American Legal Studies 1 (Spring 2012); post­ed May 4, 2012). See History of the Death Penalty and Studies. See list­ing of recent botched exe­cu­tions.