Executing Repression: How the Death Penalty is Used to Repress Opposition

• In Event: Disrupting the Status Quo of Political Repression

Abstract

As an extensive scholarship into death penalty law and practice—historically as well as contemporaneously—has already demonstrated, the institution of capital punishment is simultaneously arbitrary, when it comes to which crimes are subject to it, and systematic, when it comes to who is at risk of being executed – almost always the poor, the marginalized, and the racialized. Hence, the workings of the death penalty reflect processes that are well documented in the criminal justice system more generally. What all this scholarship demonstrates, above all, is the failure of the criminal justice system, including the death penalty, to operate justly. Less clear is the role that executions play in the production of inequities. This is the question I address in this paper. In short, with the help of a few select case studies I approach executions as an institution with repressive capabilities beyond the individual-level inequities that the criminal justice system routinely generates. To demonstrate this capability, I will focus on the phenomenon of group executions. While not typical when it comes to the delivery of death penalty, they have been common enough in history to leave clear repressive traces in their wake. This is so especially when the transgressions people are executed for are, more or less clearly, political in nature.

Author

• Annulla Linders, University of Cincinnati