| Since 1973, 112 people have been summarily released from death row, acquitted at retrials, or had charges dropped in light of evidence of their innocence. This longitudinal study examines the local newspaper accounts of 29 homicide cases in the United States that resulted in death penalty verdicts and then exonerations. These 29 cases represent the population for the years 1985--2002. For each case, I collected, coded and analyzed all local newspaper reports from the discovery of the crimes through post-exoneration. Death penalty cases are ritualistic because they follow a "script," an established pattern of social practice. In these cases, the scripts were disrupted. The cases did not result in execution, instead the defendants were exonerated.; The reports were grouped in five waves: crime, arrest, trial, post-conviction, and exoneration. I used qualitative narrative and content analysis methods to code and analyze the data by wave. I applied Habermas' theory of legitimation crisis and determined that the newspaper reports of these cases functioned to legitimize the death penalty as public policy and in a particular case. The legitimation techniques were consistent across cases, but evolved with the waves. The pre-conviction waves focused on legitimizing the death penalty for a defendant in a particular case. This included presenting the defendants as guilty, the crimes as heinous, the victims as sympathetic, and the police as crime solvers. The later waves focused on relegitimizing the death penalty as public policy in light of delegitimizing events. The major techniques included presenting the exoneration as proof the system works and as a case specific problem rather than a public policy issue.; I also analyzed the sources of information cited in the newspaper reports and concluded that the local print media relied on state sources for information. This dependence on state sources was to the detriment of the defendants. It facilitated the state's ability to legitimize the death penalty for a particular crime and to relegitimize capital punishment when faced with a legitimation crisis. |
