Crime and Punishment in American History - Lawrence M. Friedman [110]
Were executions even marginally more discreet, less primitive? It is hard to say. There was, however, a move to bring the methods up to date. New York pioneered in scientific death when it introduced the “electrical chair” in 1888, to replace the hangman, the gallows, and the noose. Experiments throughout the 1880s proved the awesome power of electricity; these experiments showed that electricity could kill animals swiftly and smoothly. Why not human beings as well?105 The governor of New York sent a message to the legislature in 1885, proposing the use of electricity. Hanging, he said, was a remnant of the “dark ages”; now “science” showed the way to put criminals to death “in a less barbarous manner.”106 The law of 1888 provided that the “punishment of death must, in every case, be inflicted by causing to pass through the body of the convict a current of electricity of sufficient intensity to cause death.”107 The electric chair was also a step in the direction of true privacy; it was housed in a small chamber in the prison, and needed considerably less space than a good, old-fashioned hanging. But the coming of “the chair” did not, of course, dampen public curiosity; it only whetted the appetite of yellow journalists.
William Kemmler had the dubious honor of being first to die in “the chair.” This was in 1890. The first woman executed by this “progressive” method was Mrs. Martha Place, in 1899. Her eyes closed, and clutching a Bible, she was guided into the chamber “dressed in a black gown with big sleeves and a few fancy frills at the bosom.... She wore russet slippers.” Her hair was braided, but a spot had been clipped near the crown to make room for the electrode. Another electrode was fastened to her leg. A current of 1,760 volts went through her body. It was all over in a short time; the doctors pronounced her dead and took the Bible from her motionless hand. The execution, we are told, “had been successful in every way.”108
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LAWFUL LAW AND LAWLESS LAW: FORMS OF AMERICAN VIOLENCE
A PHRASE IN THE TITLE OF THIS CHAPTER—“LAWLESS LAW”—MUST STRIKE the reader as oddly contradictory. But it has a lot of concrete meaning. In this society, and in all modem societies, there is an ideal form or image of criminal justice. Only the state, the law, has the right to use force. The state is supposed to have a “monopoly of legitimate violence.” And the only rightful use of force is against force; the only proper use of violence is against violence; the only proper use of law, is against the lawless.
The reality, of course, is another story. American history is rich in forms of lawlessness, and not all of them stand outside the legal system as enemies of “law and order.” Many, in fact, take place “inside” the legal system itself, or are aspects of that system—police brutality, for example. There lawlessness masquerades as law, or acts as a secret supplement to law, or replaces law. Most forms of lawlessness are “private”; ordinary crime comprises the bulk of it. Other “private” forms of lawlessness have a collective aspect: urban riots, lynchings, vigilante movements. Sometimes these outbreaks of violence claim to be reactions against official neglect, corruption, or incompetence; sometimes they imitate law (holding “trials” and passing judgment); sometimes they set themselves up as rivals to the official system and its norms.
A Violent Society
Nobody seems to doubt that the United States is, comparatively speaking, a violent society. The murder rate, as I write this, is orders of magnitude higher than those of other developed countries. Violence, it is