Facing the Death Penalty: Essays on a Cruel and Unusual Punishment

10. Rituals of Death: Capital Punishment and Human Sacrifice

10 Rituals of Death Capital Punishment and Human Sacrifice ELIZABETH D. PURDUM AND J. ANTHONY PAREDES We were perplexed by the resurgence of enthusiasm for the death penalty in the United States. According to a 1986 Gallup Report , support for the death penalty in America has reached a nearrecord high in 50 years of polling, with 70 percent of Americans favoring execution of convicted murderers (Gallup, 1986). In a 1983 poll conducted in Florida, 72 percent of respondents were found to support the death penalty, compared with 45 percent in 1964 (Cambridge Survey Research, 1985). Still more perplexing is the finding that nearly half of those supporting the death penalty agree that "only the poor and unfortunate are likely to be executed" (Ellsworth and Ross, 1983:153). Equally startling is the revelation that although deterrence is often given as a primary justification for the death An earlier, abbreviated version of this chapter was presented at the 1985 annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association. We extend our sincere gratitude to Scharlette Holdman, Larry Spalding, and Gail Anderson for their assistance in our research for this paper. Thanks go also to Mary Pohl for directing us to sources on the Aztecs. Michael Radelet was very generous in his comments on an earlier draft and provided us with references to many important sources. OUf debts to others notwithstanding, we assume full responsibility for the accuracy of information and the ideas presented here. 139 140 ELIZABETH D. PURDUM AND J. ANTHONY PAREDES penalty, most people would continue to support it even if convinced that it had no greater deterrent effect than that of a life sentence (P. Harris, 1986). In addition, there is little if any evidence that capital punishment reduces the crime rate; there seems, rather, to be some historical evidence for a reverse correlation. Pickpocketing, a crime then punishable by hanging, was rampant among spectators at executions in England circa 1700 (Lofland, 1977). Bowers and Pierce (1980) argue, on the basis of increased murder rates in New York State in the month following executions, that capital punishment has a "brutalizing" effect and leads to more, not less, violence. Why, then, does capital punishment receive such widespread support in modern America? Capital Punishment-Another "Riddle of Culture" In theory, capital punishment should be no more a puzzle than any other seemingly bizarre, nonrational custom. Either human cultures are amenable to scientific explanation or they are not. And we anthropologists have not been timid about tackling everything from Arunta penile subincision to Hindu cow love as problems for scientific explication. As a first step in this task, we will compare capital punishment in Florida, the leader in the United States in death sentencing since Florida's 1972 capital punishment statute was affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976, with certain forms ofhuman sacrifice as practiced by the Aztecs of Mexico in the sixteenth century. This is not a capricious comparison. John Cooper (1976) pOintedly seeks the "socio-religious origins of capital punishment" in ancient rites of, to use his term, "propitiatory death." But his study is narrowly constrained by canons of Western philosophy and history. By making a more exotic comparison, we hope to point the way to more nomothetic principles for understanding state-sanctioned homicide in complex societies. Albert Camus (1959) also perceived elements of religiOUS ritual in French capital punishment, but argued that the practice continued only because hidden from the view of the general public. Anticipating our comparisons here, anthropologist Colin Turnbull concludes in his article "Death by Decree" that the key to understanding capital punishment is to be found in its ritual element (1978). John Lofland (1977) has compared the dramaturgy RITUALS OF DEATH 141 of state executions circa 1700 in England with those of contemporary America, concluding that modern executions in their impersonal , unemotional, and private aspects appear humane, yet deny the reality of death and strip the condemned of any opportunity to die with dignity or courage. It was the public media spectacle surrounding recent executions in Florida that triggered the thoughts leading to this paper. Detailed, minute-by-minute accounts ofFlorida's first post-1976 execution , widely reported press conferences with death row inmates, television images of the ambulance bearing the body of an executed criminal, news photos of mourners and revelers outside the prison on the night before an execution-all these served to transform a closely guarded, hidden expression ofthe...