Capital Punishment as the Unconstitutional Establishment of Religion: A Girardian Reading of the Death Penalty

McBride, James

doi:10.1093/jcs/37.2.263

Cited by 19 publications

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“…The use of public shaming and sanctions facilitates one’s expressive reaction to crime. (9) “We should inflict the death penalty for serious crimes more frequently,” capital punishment is considered in the criminal justice system as the “ultimate punishment” and described by McBride (1995) as the virtual sacrifice intended to rid society from the infection of violence. The degree of support toward the death penalty can be an important indicator of an individual’s level of punitiveness.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Role of Social Distress, Political Affiliation, and Education in Measuring Punitive Attitudes

Gideon

Sherman-Oren

2014

International Criminal Justice Review

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The purpose of this study is to examine the different factors that shape and facilitate punitive attitudes among Israeli public. Punitive attitudes were examined in respect to several demographic and environmental variables such as gender, level of religiosity, level of education, political affiliation, and victimization. In addition, social distress in respect to the political climate of the country was taken into consideration to examine the effect of “historical” events on results reliability. Using a random selection, a sample of 471 Israeli respondents was examined at two different time periods (Wave I: 2008–2009 and Wave II: 2011). Results of the current study indicate that demographic characteristics as well as social distress are related to the manifestation of punitive attitudes among Israelis, and thus the study demonstrates the different factors that affect public attitudes toward crime and punishment in the Israeli context. Results are discussed in regard to policy, and recommendations are made for future studies.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Role of Social Distress, Political Affiliation, and Education in Measuring Punitive Attitudes

Gideon

Sherman-Oren

2014

International Criminal Justice Review

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Section: Taking Stock Of the Corpusmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While the execution sermon disappeared as a literary and spectacular form, the modern execution ritual bears strong hallmarks of the colonial theater, as Cooney and Phillips () show in their analysis of the impact of religious conversion on apologies offered by executees—a modern analogue of scaffold repentance. A growing segment of the literature adopts or adapts Girardian approaches to violence and punishment in their analyses of the American death penalty (Redekop ; McBride ; B. K. Smith ; Brewin ; Depoortere ; Santoro ). This literature is important in its collective analysis of the event, the spectacle, and the moralistic communicative effects of that spectacle, and while explicit comparisons with execution sermons are uncommon, a synthetic, comprehensive analysis linking colonial and modern execution theater would be a welcome addition to the overall literature on the subject.…”

Section: Capital Punishment From Jamestown To Greggmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…First, this question appears to privilege certain religious traditions at the expense of others. This raises the possibility that ‘Witherspooning’ conflicts with the First Amendment's ‘exercise’ and ‘establishment’ clauses (McBride ; Simson & Garvey ). The Court discounts any such conflicts and maintains that the issue is one of protection from compulsion, not a denial of an otherwise publicly available right.…”

Section: Beliefs and Actions: Perspectives On Both Sides Of The Courtmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Religion and Capital Punishment in the United States

Santoro

2014

Religion Compass

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Religion and the death penalty have long been linked in the United States, from colonial establishments that used biblical law as one basis for criminal statutes to the contemporary use of religion to support or oppose executions. This article begins by analyzing the literature on these links at the most abstract before using religiously motivated opposition to capital punishment to survey the history and historiography on the subject. It then looks at how religious institutions engage the issue before bringing the discussion into the courtroom to look at how religion impacts the legal process and how this has been studied. The article concludes by suggesting some avenues for future research.A scene from an execution: A person is strapped to a cruciform gurney, arms connected to IV lines. Clergy frequently are among the witnesses. Last words are spoken or withheld. On some signal, unseen operators press unseen buttons, and toxic chemicals exact lethal justice as multiple sets of victims look on. Religious voices on each side of the capital punishment debate have pontificated and reflected on forgiveness and on justice, on vengeance and retribution, on salvation and procedural inequities, on victimhood and responsibility, on guilt and culpability, on right and wrong, and on life and death. These debates and discussions are carried out by the public and in religious institutions, carried via the national media, and are representative of such debates in general whether we are talking about Texas' 1998 execution of Karla Faye Tucker (Robertson 2000;Storm 2001) or Matthew Poncelet, a composite of two death row prisoners with whom Sister Helen Prejean worked and to whom she ministered (Prejean 1993; Robbins 1995).These cultural debates, like the ever-expanding body of writings 1 on the links between religion and the death penalty, show how capital punishment functions as a social, cultural, and, ultimately, legal institution, showcasing the scope, if not always the specifics, of how the death penalty is many different things at the same time. One peculiarity of these writings collectively is that while there is a great deal written at the level of the abstract debate, comparatively little has been written at the point of engagement, that is, the execution itself and its aftermath. I have chosen to reflect this by narrowing my focus as the essay proceeds: I begin by discussing religion 2 and the death penalty in the abstract and gradually narrow my scope and end with considerations penned by those directly impacted by the process. I first survey the corpus of works dealing with the death penalty per se. I then outline the historical links between religion and the death penalty in the United States before looking at how religion frames the debate, how religion and the legal process interact, and the roles religion plays in the lives of those impacted by capital murder and executions. Taking Stock of the CorpusA major subset of the corpus considers capital punishment from a historical perspectivewhat the religious traditi...

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Todesstrafe/Hinrichtung

Wacbowski¹

2005

Metzler Lexikon Religion

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Capital Punishment as the Unconstitutional Establishment of Religion: A Girardian Reading of the Death Penalty

Cited by 19 publications

References 0 publications

The Role of Social Distress, Political Affiliation, and Education in Measuring Punitive Attitudes

The Role of Social Distress, Political Affiliation, and Education in Measuring Punitive Attitudes

Religion and Capital Punishment in the United States

Todesstrafe/Hinrichtung

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