Media's Portrayal of Capital Punishment

1. Group 8:
Bryce Bogle, Taylor Carr, Michelle Creasman, Anthony
Hardey, Kevin Helgren, Blair Hendrix, Lauren Land, Michael
McCarney

3.  White professor David Gale, an advocate of death
penalty abolishment, is convicted for the murder of a
colleague.
 Reporter Bitsey Bloom investigates David Gale’s story
as she conducts his final interviews.
 Bloom finds that he actually is innocent of the crime,
but is too late; Gale’s life is ended and becomes a
symbol of the faultiness of the death penalty.

11.  Chinese capital punishment statistics
 Public approval of death penalty
 v.s. the United States
 in terms of international law
 Media v.s. the courts
 Starting in 2005 Chinese media has exposed unlawful
executions
 Reasons for abolishing

12.  Iranian capital punishment statistics
 Government control & media
 Emadeddin Baghi & Human Rights Campaigns

13.  U.S. fascination with crime
 “other media sources that discuss capital punishment
and U.S. fascination with the topic (magazines,
movies, shows)”

14.  http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.ph
p?id=398992&section=2.3
 Our society is obsessed with crime
 There are entire book sections in libraries dedicated to
“true crime”
 Tons of television series based on crime and the police
force.

15.  http://www.imdb.com/search/title?genres=crime&sor
t=moviemeter&title_type=tv_series
 List of Crime related TV shows

16.  “NCIS” earned third place with 19.5 million viewers.
 6 - “NCIS: Los Angeles”
 http://shows.com/2012-most-popular-tv-shows

17.  America’s fascination with crime is evident in the fact
that 2 crime related television series are in the top 6
most anticipated/watched television series of 2011-
2012. This list included reality shows and everything
else tv related, so it is pretty impressive that these
shows even made the list, let alone the top 10.
However, these shows are notorious for glorifying the
criminal justice system, or if they put it in a bad light it
is simply because they are completely making it
unrealistic and have a hero saving the day

18.  http://www.cncpunishment.com/forums/showthread.
php?5408-10-Best-Death-Penalty-Movies
 List of the top 10 capital punishment movies;
 Life of David Gale is number 10 on this list
 http://www.screenjunkies.com/movies/genres-
movies/drama/10-best-capital-punishment-movies/
 #10 on this list too of top 10 all time

19.  There have been numerous movies made about the
capital punishment system.
 The Life of David Gale is in the top 10 of all time.
 Most of these movies portray the capital punishment
system in a negative light

20.  David Gale is an innocent white man executed
 The Green Mile: an innocent black man is executed
(however he is portrayed as having magical heal
powers)
 The negative portrayals in movies are usually far
fetched and highly unlikely to ever happen

21.  “California has a larger death row, but Texas’s is indisputably the
most lethal, not just in the United States but anywhere in the
democratic world. Since the Supreme Court allowed executions to
resume in 1976, the Lone Star State has taken the lives of three
women and 439 men, more than a third of the national total.
During the final year of George W. Bush’s governorship, the state
administered lethal injection forty times, an American record”
(Perkinson 37)
 “Most Texans believe that their state’s vast network of prisons was
constructed to corral dangerous men, to keep “baby killers and
murders” off the streets. A bloody kernel of truth underlies this
sentiment: Texas is dangerous terrain. Although the state’s crime
rate has fallen sharply since the late 1980’s, it remains about 24
percent higher than the national average. When it comes to
murder – regarded by criminologists as the most accurate index of
lawbreaking since almost all homicides come to the attention of
the police – Texas fares somewhat better, exceeding the national
average by just 5 percent. “ (Perkinson 19)

22.  “One prisoner I know, a dimple-faced lifer named
Michael Jewell, admits that he was a thug when he
went to prison for capital murder in 1970. But that was
almost forty years ago. As a twenty-two-year-
old, Jewell shot and killed a store clerk. As an aging
baby boomer, he works full time as an inventory clerk
and spends long hours in his cell reading psychology
books and practicing Buddhist meditation. His is a
different man than the one jurors sent to prison, yet
his fate is defined by a single act.” (Perkinson 22)

23. (Amnestyusa.org)

24.  “”I guess I haven’t made up my mind about the death
penalty,” he said shortly after we first met, an honest but
jarring remark from a man who used to carry it out,
sometimes two or three times a week. Having read through
grisly case briefings prepared by the Texas attorney general,
Willett is convinced that most of the men and women he
watched die earned their fate. But as a Christian he isn’t
sure it was his due to seal it.” (Perkinson 18)
 “Their loss remains just as powerful, their wounds
reopened. “Him dying now or dying of old age, it’s not
going to change anything,” said one survivor after watching
the killer of his daughter die. “And it’s not going to bring
me any satisfaction or happiness.”” (Perkinson 42)

25.  Michael:
 “[Michael] came home from a movie…to find his mother curled up
on the floor against the bed. Towering over her was Michael’s father,
gripping her hair with one fist and pummeling her with the other”
(Perkinson 22).
 “[Michael’s] father took the bird in his hand, stroked its back, and
then popped its head off with his thumb” (22).
 “By the time Michael was eight, he was turning the violence he
experienced at home outward” (22).
 Prisoners are united by pain – “pain that they have soaked up as
victims and pain they have inflicted on others” (23).

26.  Ken:
 “’I once tried hitting [my mom’s boyfriend] with a
broomstick, but he just backhanded me across the
room” (28).
 “[Our grandmother’s boyfriend] would wait until [our]
grandmother was in a drunk stupor…and then creep into
our bedroom and fondle our genitals and try to
penetrate our rectums with his finger…” (29).

27.  Kim:
 “We were ‘the family that loks perfect from the outside…but on the
inside my mom was a caged human being” (24).
 “Kim remembers that when her mother…made it up to the porch,
[her mom’s boyfriend] ‘stepped out and punched her so hard in the
face that the groceries went flying, along with [her] mom” (24).
 “Two other men molested her as she bounced from house to house”
(25).
 “Kim witnessed her uncle…shoot himself in the head. Not long
after…she found out that her biological father had been murdered”
(25).
 “Physical and sexual abuse, trauma, poverty. We’re products of our
environments” (26).

28.  “He’s about the only outside contact I have now.” –David Gale
 Suggests correlation between physical and mental alienation.
 “No one who looks through that glass sees a person – they see a crime.” –David Gale
 Unveils stigma associated with death row inmate label.
 David Gale ultimately turns to drinking – alcohol serves as a temporary solution to a
permanent problem.
 Signs of insanity – breaking payphone, stating that “his sheep needs a manger”
 “Funny how we can be so selfish, right?” –David Gale
 Suggests a new mentality. Perhaps being on death row has afforded him a new
perspective from which to view life?
 “You’re not here to save me; you’re here to save my son’s memory of his father.”
 Suggests that Gale has developed a rather selfless persona.
 “Maybe death is a gift” –David Gale
 Conveys acceptance.
 Gale is very indifferent near his execution – eats and showers in silence.

29.  D – Denial
 A – Anger
 B – Bargaining
 D – Depression
 A – Acceptance
 First proposed by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

30.  Many forms of media discuss death row inmates
(movies, TV shows, documentaries)
 Their characteristics are often similar
 The media portrays a death row inmate as:
 Young adult
 Male
 Ethnic (typically African American or Hispanic)
 Gang affiliated
 Uneducated
 Often from a broken family

31. John Coffey “Red” “Tookie”
Death row inmate from The Green Mile Inmate from The Shawshank Redemption Inmate from Redemption

32.  In opposition to the stereotypical death row inmate, David
Gale is a white, educated, middle class male.
 Ironically, he does not follow the generic characteristics,
and he was innocent of any crime.

33.  Hollywood and News Media
 Narratives
 Redistributive Justice
 Wrongfully convicted
 Representation
 Casting
 Stereotyping

34.  Representation
 Casting & Stereotyping
 Black Criminals
 Black male body=Physical threat
 Big strong black brute
 Dumb, uneducated, irrational
 White Female victims
 Innocent virgins
 Helpless and weak
 Narratives
 Retributive justice
 Film shot in such a way that makes the audience relate to the victim
and victims family
 Focus on aesthetic of crime (violent rape and brutual murders)
 Limited focus on social circumstances of surrounding crime
 Little to no character development of criminal
 Limited details about criminals life

35.  Representation
 Casting & Stereotyping
 Relatively more diverse in terms of race
 More white males cast as death-row inmate
 Black males still mostly portrayed as Mandingos
 Big strong dumb (green mile)
 Sometimes dumbness makes them sympathetic
murderers
 Narratives
 Wrongfully Convicted
 Viewer placed in the shoes of the jurors
 Portrayals of racial bias(Green Mile&To Kill a Mockingbird)
 Shown as a issue of the past
 Both set in pre-civil rights era
 Little concern about modern day racial prejudice

36.  Representation
 Casting & Stereotyping
 White female victim
 More value placed on white life in general
 White male actor as death row inmate
 Constructed as intelligent & goodhearted
 Appearance fits societal norm
 Narrative
 Wrongfully Convicted
 Viewer placed in the shoes of the jurors
 Employed professor
 Highly intelligent
 Not an accurate representation at all

37.  Not many portrayals of women as death row inmates
 Defeminizes female death row inmates in media
coverage
 Females covered in media are usually somehow
involved in domestic violence

38.  The Anti-Death Penalty films and media coverage don’t
critique the death penalty as a form of punishment they
just critique its accuracy. If it was accurate there would be
no perceived problem.
 The same problematic representation of race and gender
that exist in society are present in the media and
Hollywood films because they have a vested interest in
maintaining the status quo. ( Funding&Ratings)

39.  Execution of a Colored soldier. 1864. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. Web. 6 November
2012.
 Execution of Czolgosz. Thomas A. Edison, Inc., 1901. MPG file.
 Evans, Kim Masters. "A Continuing Conflict: A History of Capital Punishment in the United States." Capital Punishment: Cruel
and Unusual? 2012 ed.Detroit: Gale, 2012. 1-12. Information Plus Reference Series. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 8
October 2012.
 Gardner, Alexander. Washington, D.C. Adjusting the rope for the execution of Wirz. 1865. Library of Congress Prints and
Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. Web. 6 November 2012.
 Gardner, Alexander. Washington, D.C. Hooded body of Captain Wirz hanging from the scaffold. 1865. Library of Congress Prints
and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. Web. 6 November 2012.
 George Witherell, the murderer of Wall & McCain. Lynched Dec. 4, 1888. 1888. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
Division, Washington, D.C. Web. 6 November 2012.
 "Huntsville Death Chamber." amnestyusa.org. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Nov. 2012.
 <http://blog.amnestyusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/
 Lethal-Injection.jpg>.
 Perkinson, Robert. Texas Tough: The Rise of America's Prison Empire. N.p.: n.p.,
 n.d. Print.
 Reekie, John. Troops drawn up in Hallow Square to witness an execution. 1864. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
Division, Washington, D.C. Web. 6 November 2012.
 “15,000 WITNESS LYNCHING: Convicted Negro Taken From Texas Courtroom and Burned at Stake.” New York Times (1857-
1922). 16 May 1916: 4. ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The New York Times (1851-2008). Web. 6 November 2012.
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Coffey
 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111161/
 http://www.google.com/imgres?q=redemption:+the+stan+tookie+williams+story
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redemption:_The_Stan_Tookie_Williams_Story
 http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,419583,00.html
 http://www.screenjunkies.com/movies/genres-movies/drama/10-best-capital-punishment-movies/
 http://www.cncpunishment.com/forums/showthread.php?5408-10-Best-Death-Penalty-Movies
 http://www.imdb.com/search/title?genres=crime&sort=moviemeter&title_type=tv_series
 http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=398992&section=2.3