Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Death penalty commissions have been established by governors, legislators and state bar associations across the nation over the past decade to examine problems associated with the death penalty and make remedial recommendations. This paper explores recent death penalty commissions in six states as agenda setting mechanisms that resulted in substantive changes in state death penalty law. In each of the cases studied, we look at the precipitating crisis or event(s) that led to the establishment of the commission, the composition of the commissions, the agenda-setter's charge to the commission, the political environment and the nature of the recommendations made. _x000d__x000d_Findings suggest that the power of the agenda setter and the political environment are both important variables. The political context, the composition of commissions, the charge given to the commission and the framing the issue appeared to have a significant influence on policy outcomes.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Anti death penalty cartoons represent a kind of cultural space within which clearly, explicit attempts are made to subvert conventional 'justifications' for the practice. References are repeatedly made to it's barbarity and unjust application. Implicitly,though,more interesting things seem to be articulated. An attack on the culture of the punitive may be read as as an attempt to rescript the meaning of victimisation.Critical Criminology has consistently been accused of failure to acknowledge the 'victim'. These cartoons function to redefine the 'victim', and simultaneously, the 'criminal' also.

Publication Type: Poster
Abstract: For the past eight years I have been listening to death penalty workers in Oregon as they talk about the effects of participating in the death penalty on their lives and work. In addition, I have spent a great deal of time listening to family members of murder victims and students of the death penalty in classes I teach. Certain themes of common concern emerge in the testimonies such as concerns for public safety, retributive needs, distrust of government agencies and legislators, and enmification of offenders. However, when those who implement or insist on the death penalty learn of the suffering of those who carry it out, their concern for innocent victims comes to the fore and they become thoughtful, particularly about a local concept of “We, the people” and what “we” should be doing. I would like to present this methodology in a poster session at ASC and engage visitors in conversation about listening as a way of building complex and layered portraits of the situatedness of public policy in local identities.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: My paper compares the Chicago Tribune’s reporting of rituals surrounding executions in two periods: 1850-1900 and 1950-2000. I focus on the role of the condemned in establishing or contesting the meaning of the execution. I argue that both periods witness a struggle over the meaning of the execution. While the depiction of the condemned is always at the heart of those struggles, the condemned himself plays a different role in the two periods. In the first period the accounts of the execution ritual focused on the spiritual transformation the condemned was said to undergo in the days leading up to the execution. In contrast, the later accounts fail to present one coherent meaning for the execution. Rather, the struggle over the meaning of the execution intensified in this period and the condemned himself was given much greater latitude by the papers to present his own interpretation of this meaning. Moreover, instead of having a religious focus, the Tribune’s portrayals of the ritual during the second period emphasize the legal struggles that occurred prior to the execution. This shift in focus indicates the changing meanings of and justifications for capital punishment in the two periods studied.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Researchers have long argued over the potential for academic research and researchers to affect public opinion or transform public policy. In this paper I look at this debate within the context of the Death Penalty Moratorium movement. Over the last eight years proponents have pushed for moratoriums in state legislatures, governors’ offices, and in the national congress. While my research indicates that these proponents have experienced limited success in their efforts, there is some evidence to conclude that the moratorium debate itself has affected discourses on capital punishment at the state level. In this paper I consider the role of researchers in the shifting legislative discourse, focusing on three issues: 1) the extent to which state legislatures have proposed or passed moratorium legislation over the last five years; 2) evidence that such legislative actions have utilized the discourse or findings of death penalty researchers; and 3) the relationships– including temporal relationships-- between legislative action, academic research and local or national public opinion polls about the death penalty or death penalty moratoriums. I conclude by asking whether academic research has been used by legislative actors as a strategy to invoke moratorium debates or a strategy to delay moratorium efforts.