post your work here. i went back to netscape so i have access to everything again. thanks for your patience. Will be posting last week grades tomorrow morning after 9AM
post your work here. i went back to netscape so i have access to everything again. thanks for your patience. Will be posting last week grades tomorrow morning after 9AM
September 24, 2006 at 6:09 am
The film Mr. Death was definitely not a film I would choose to watch on my own time. The whole time I was watching it I had a very eerie feeling, I even felt a little scared. The film showcased the rise and fall of Fred A. Leuchter Jr., an execution specialist who worked to find more humane ways for capital punishment. The film was divided into two parts, Leuchter’s involvement with capital punishment and Leuchter’s involvement in proving that the Holocaust was a hoax.
When the film started showing Leuchter engineering new ways to use the electric chair, lethal injection machines and the gallows I was appalled. I couldn’t understand how this man could create ways to kill people. Leuchter goes on to explain that he is a firm believer in capital punishment, but just because he believes in capital punishment he doesn’t believe in capital torture.
He says in the documentary that many people ask him how he sleeps at night. If I were to meet him, I would ask him the same exact question. How can a person sleep when there job is to create ways to kill other human beings, no matter if it is people on death row. I do not believe in capital punishment, as I have stated many times before, and to watch a documentary of a man who not only condones it but helps the process, makes me sick to my stomach.
Not only did Leuchter make me sick with his line of work, he went on to side with a revisionist historian, Ernst Zundel, who was on trial for spreading false rumors about the Holocaust. Zundel wrote books and pamphlets about the Holocaust saying that it never happened and that all the people killed were not killed by gas chambers. Zundel then hired Leuchter to go to the Auschwitz death camp and prove that the gas chambers did not exist. Leuchter went to Auschwitz and collected samples from the crematoriums, and he came to the conclusion that Auschwitz did not house gas chambers. I think that this is ridiculous, so many survivors and witnesses have given accounts of what Auschwitz was like, including its gas chambers. Has the man never read the novel Night or Number the Stars? Does he believe that all of the stuff that has been previously recorded about the death camp is all a lie? I don’t believe that for a second.
After the trial, Zundel was found guilty, and Leuchter career and marriage were over. Prison officials no longer wanted to hire him for his services, and people began to believe that he was Anti-Semitic. They began to believe that he was racist towards Jews and that he was perhaps a Neo Nazi. He lost everything in his life because he went against what history has taught us. Perhaps he suffers from the histrionic disease, and just wants to put himself out in the lime light. When I saw that he lost everything I did not feel bad for him, he made his bed and now he has to lie in it.
One of Foucault’s examples of power that I noticed in the film was that of hegemony. Leuchter was influenced by Zundel to believe that there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz. Therefore he did research and he wrote a report on it that people everywhere could read. He wanted everyone to believe what he did, that Auschwitz did not house gas chambers, which in fact it really did. Another example of Foucault’s teachings I saw in the film was the fact that Foucault always believed that one should be true to themselves. Leuchter was definitely true to himself, no matter what people thought about him or said about him, he never faltered in the decisions he had made. He knew that he had to stay true to himself, even if it meant losing his wife and career.
September 24, 2006 at 6:20 am
Ben Basque
Human 6 1395
9/21/06
Mr. Death/Lynching #4
Pg. 1
Mr. Death was a hard film to watch, partly because of its content, but also because of the monologue speech. Fred Leuchter is a self taught ‘electrical engineer”, who starts the film by telling us about his happy childhood spent helping his father who is a prison guard. Fred also tells us about playing with other prison guard children in the electric chair and how there is a legend about prison guard children who play in the chair will die in the chair. Leuchter tells us how he feels that he changed that legend because instead of dieing in the chair he has grown up to build them.
Leuchter makes it clear that he is pro death penalty, but wants a human way for the condemned to die. The film talks a little more about Leuchter building an Electric chair for Tennessee. One of the important criteria for the Tennessee chair is to incorporate the old wood in to the new chair because it was part of the original gallows that Tennessee used for their first executions. To me that seems like a crazy reason to keep something and use it on another machine of death. After Leuchter built that chair he was then hired to build a gas chamber. Leuchter has an electrical back ground so it is not too far fetched to have him at least look at improving the electric chair, but when he goes on to build the gas chamber and the lethal injection machine that is just ridiculous. He has no chemical or medical back ground. Is the only requirement to be considered an expert on machines of execution, the willingness to build them?
Fred Leuchter comes off as a man who lacks a few social skills and as some one who is looking for approval. In 1988 he seems to have found that approval. Ernst Zundel a “historical revisionist” is accused of publicizing false information on the Holocaust. His defense team hires Leuchter as an expert witness to prove that no one was gassed in the Auschwitz concentration camp and there fore there was no Holocaust.
Leuchter does not tell them that he is not educated and is not really an expert and the defense team does not question his credentials. Leuchter bumbles through his “research”. He took random samples of bricks and mortar and submitted them to a respected lab, but did not tell them what they were testing for. To find cyanide gas you have to test the surface and the surface only, or you will not get cyanide results, because cyanide will only penetrate a thin surface layer. The lab crushed the samples and tested them. The results came back with no cyanide.
Ben Basque
Human 6 1395
9/21/06
Mr. Death
Pg. 2
Leuchter did a report for the courts that said that because of the lack of cyanide in his samples there was no Holocaust. He never researched records or looked at the transcripts of interviews from the survivors themselves. He based his report solely on his shoddy investigation looking for cyanide gas.
Leuchter stands by his report and loses his wife, but gains the “respect” of the Historical Revisionists/Nazi groups. He seems to revel in the attention that he giving ridiculous speeches about how Jews were not killed in concentration camps to the Revisionists. He has finally found validation for his death obsession. Leuchter never checked historical archives or he would have seen the irrefutable evidence that it did in fact happen. This complete lack of checking facts and his report writing reminds me of Foucault’s quote “people know what they do, they frequently know why they do what they do, but what they don’t know is what they do does”. I think this applies to Leuchter because I believe that he did know that he was writing was fiction, but that he was so caught up in getting acceptance from these revisionists that he wrote it anyway, and did not think of the bigger consequences for his report.
Lynching
After reading the synopsis of From Lynch Mobs to the Killing State by Charles Oglree I did a web search on the ethnicity of death row inmates in America. I found the statistics staggering. It looks like the stats put it at almost 10 non white to 1 white. This is a pretty scary eye opener. I am a man “Of Color” and I have had some encounters with being stereo typed by someone because of my dark coloring. I have been naïve to believe that this only happens with un important things. I truly have always thought that the judicial system was set up to put us all on the “same playing field”. Through the last few weeks of class I have come to see that the judicial system states that we are all equal and have the same rights, but if you do not know your rights and if you can not afford to get someone who knows the laws and rues of the courts than you are at a serious disadvantage.
I think that one of the factors that comes in to play with the large number of people of color on death row has to due with the fact that there is a discrepancy in the ratio of income and education levels to race. People of color as a whole tend to have a lower education and income level, thus limiting their access to good representation. I believe that lower social economics also leads towards low self worth and I believe that low self worth leads to an acceptance of abuse. This is Foucault’s self referential power at play. If
Ben Basque
Human 6 1395
Mr. Death/Lynching
Pg.3
you see your self as a victim or worthless you come to believe this as true and you accept the facts as they are presented instead of requiring solid answers and good representation.
I think that sometimes cultural issues come into play with a defense. We tend to assume that we are all American, so we are the same. That simply is not true. We have many
subcultures in America, even among European Americans. The majority of lawyers are white and come from a higher social economic back ground than the people that they are representing. So they approach a defense form their personal experience and someone of
a different cultural back ground might not understand the whys of what their attorney is doing. I believe that unless you have lived in a cultural environment it is hard to really get in touch with the rational of why some one did what they did. I believe that good communication is imperative to a good defense, but communication style and other nuances that could work towards a defense are lost when we have lawyers and defendants from such different back grounds.
If you have an education so that you know your rights and you have adequate money, you can assist in your defense by hiring respected specialists to prove any point your defense is trying to make. Thus even if you are guilty you have someone to throw doubt on your guilt or your sanity. This can keep you from death row.
September 24, 2006 at 7:15 pm
I didn’t even think about posting my lynching assignment with the Mr. Death assignment, so here is my lynching assignment:
I am studying to become a history teacher, and my area of focus has always been black history. I have read about lynching in several different books, and watched several documentaries on the subject. Long before I became a history major I believed that lynching meant that someone was to be hung, I had no idea that it was a racial crime that whites performed on African Americans. According to http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAlynching.htm after the formation of the Ku Klux Klan an average of two African Americans were lynched per week.
The idea of a public lynching just makes my skin crawl. People came to these things, excited, waiting to see African Americans tortured. Even though lynching no longer occurs, there are still plenty of racial barriers that have not been broken. African Americans have always been stereotyped as being poor and ignorant. Well because of this it seems that many African Americans are put on death row, because of their lack of money to help their case or their lack of education.
I think that lack of education and money also flows over to white people. For example look at Elmo Patrick Sonnier in Dead Man Walking he didn’t have money to afford a good lawyer and he was sentenced to death. Very close to his date of death he did get a good lawyer who found tons of things that could have kept his life. But because he didn’t have the money, Sonnier was killed.
Foucault states in Discipline and Punish that, “The public execution is now seen as a hearth in which violence bursts again into flame. Punishment, then, will tend to become the most hidden part of the penal process” (9). Foucault was right on the money. Lynching used to be a public spectacle, meant for people to enjoy. Nowadays the death penalty is very closed off. Death row inmates sit on death row, waiting to die and when it is there day, they are put in a small room, with very few people there to witness. If the penal systems are such believers in capital punishment, why do they hide it? That is the biggest question I have.
September 24, 2006 at 7:58 pm
Ryan McGraw
Human 6
Mr. Death/Foucault
When I first started this movie I had no idea what to expect. To be honest I never really thought about the person that created the electric chair, the gas chamber, the gallows or the lethal injection machine. Fred Leuchter at first is a normal looking, haven’t seen the sun enough, thick glasses, definition of what a nerd would look like. My first perception of Leuchter was completely wrong in that for many years he was the industry standard for designing equipment in capital punishment executions. Growing up, visiting the prison where his father worked was a special treat for him. He got a first hand look at the prison inmates and on special occasion the electric chair. This started his fascination.
“There is no difference in life support systems or execution systems.” (Leuchter) Leuchter explained that they both had a very important specific purpose, just one was to live and one was to die. The reason he decided to make a living in this field was he believed that “he didn’t want to see people tortured.” (Leuchter) He started a business upgrading prison equipment and found that all of them were substandard. He vowed he would do it for less money and better quality then any electrician the prison could hire. One of the most disturbing things I found about this movie is they said that prison inmates would often create the electric chair and often from just pictures they had seen. This was amazing to me because it makes me think about how inhumane so many people have died or were tortured because of the states inability to have functional equipment. “There remains a trace of ‘torture’ in the modern mechanisms of criminal justice – a trace that has not been entirely overcome, but which is enveloped, increasingly, by the non-coral nature of the penal system.” (Foucault) To support this statement Leuchter once said, “We must not forget the person being executed is a human being”.
An underlying tone in the film I noticed that Leuchter touched on briefly was the concept that his him and his father had relationships with many of the prison inmates. He was allowed to go visit and assist his father in working at the prison. This I believe was one reason that he decide to further the idea that death he wanted to see as a humane act. I noticed a strong correlation between the film Dead Man Walking, the book Dead Man Walking, the film Mr. Death and Foucault in relationship to power and domination. First of all in the film Dead Man Walking the sense of dominance created tension between characters and prison guards. This sense, which was meant to be portrayed closer to our time now, was completely contradictory to the story Dead Man walking in that totally domination in the prison system was accepted and respected. The prison inmates in each of these two instances were allowed more freedoms which in turn allowed reciprocation of respect even friendships. Remembering these relationships, in the film Mr. Death, Leuchter I believe shows us truth to Foucault’s ideas in that “…knowledge derives its authority from certain relationships of power and domination.” Also as Foucault’s states, there is a large “correlation between body and punishment”. I think body and punishment are just as much related to social relationships, which in turn are almost a deciding factor of the outcome of each prison situation; film, book, film respectively. The additive that was subjected that changes between these four different information sources was time. It seems that time has changed the perception of the relationship between knowledge and power. The more personable prison inmates were associated with people, the more people took notice and understood them as a human, such as Leuchter and even Sister Helen stated in Dead Man Walking, both the book and movie. Due to this relationship between body and punishment, the more passion they took in making sure their punishment was just and humane. For this we must also not forget Foucault’s idea, “The prison system is part of a “carceral network” that spreads through society, infiltrating and penetrating everywhere.” (Sparknotes.com, Discipline and Punish)
Ryan McGraw
9.22.06
Lynching
It seems to me that society has always dubbed the word lynching with African Americans. The history of the word originated in the 1730’s by a man named Charles Lynch and was a punishment for slaves by hanging. As I did more research I found the historical significance of lynching and why it was that I understood it to be associated with African Americans.* The Ku Klux Klan was the group that significantly accelerated hangings of African Americans.* In 1981 a case where a black man murdered a white policeman, the jury whom was mostly black never reached a verdict. In response to this outrage Bennie Hays, a KKK member said, “If a black man can get away with killing a white man, we ought to be able to get away with killing a black man.”* This justification of killing in any means is completely absurd. The only concept that should come into play with his outrage would be the legal system, as Charles Ogletree and Austin Sarat authors of From Lynch Mobs to the Killing State clearly state. “…Excluding blacks because of there race denied both the defendant and the excluded jurors of equal protection of the laws…” (5, Ogletree & Sarat). We do not really know if all of the accused that were sentenced by a court of law were poorly represented. As Ogletree and Sarat assess the court system, they state that “…more then 100 death row inmates have been freed from prison altogether, due to DNA testing…” This has been a deciding factor in court cases for many years and still to this day affects the outcome of court cases. I think in this matter it comes down to inadequate funding and resources. As our guest speaker stated, “there are no rich people on death row.” This I think is a very large underlying issue that cascades to a larger social and racial affect. Money presents proper representation in court, money creates a lawyer which can select a sufficient jury and money pays for DNA testing. To tie it back, the KKK had money to spend on legal fees and I wouldn’t be surprised if politicians played a part in the lynching before true law was imposed against it publicly. Yet even after it was opposed in public, for many years it was done legally. “Spectacle lynchings were replaced by legal ones. In which a person was tried and convicted and hung almost immediately…within a few hours often without adequate legal defense” (Timothy Kaufman-Osborn, Capital Punishment as Legal Lynching). This, in my opinion has to be in part by the KKK funding political people. Ten years after the Bennie Hays murder trial, the KKK was found to be responsible for killing an African American in retribution of the court case, and was fined 7 million dollars which whipped out the strong force of the KKK.
The real underlying concept, as Charles Mills states, is the “epistemology of ignorance.” The history of America as a nation was founded on racism and injustice. The Declaration was being signed while slaves were being brought to this continent to be sold. For two hundred years after our nation was founded African Americans couldn’t even drink water from the same faucet as white people because of this social barrier. Even today ignorance is placed at every institution we take part in; schools and work. The statement made by Mills couldn’t be more correct, “The disposition of American history may be understood at least in part as a product of the relationship between the social and racial contracts at any given moment in time.” The social and racial contracts are not written anywhere, just implied. This to me says that the groups of white people that participated in public lynching were there own court system. Judge, jury and sentencing all happened in one sitting and as a result created the powerful force of the unwritten social contract. As Timothy Kaufman-Osborn, states “graphic forms of racial violence such as spectacle lynching became less imperative once white dominance was assured by less transparent but more calculable means.” So in essence, white people throughout the society and not just KKK members, were trying to prove themselves as powerful by pointlessly murdering people in public. In relationship to this history has shown us that lynching was not a legal practice for a long time. It showed a dominance of whites over blacks because of the public display of humiliation. “Many saw the violence as a means of carrying out the spirit of formal law…”(Kaufman-Osborn). As executions became more private it seemed there was now a wall building around the death penalty that was now only able to be seen by the real judge, jury and executioner. The racial forms of death were now protected by laws, which just mean more barriers that block the racism. “Lethal injection is a technology of death that manufactures the evasive color blindness thru which, the black body becomes visibly invisible.” (Mills). The law seems to straiten out the system and try’s to do right for man kind, but it seems that there is now a wall put around the death penalty arena. Now the system is surrounded by hoops one must jump through. If you miss a hoop or don’t have enough money to get the proper support and guidance you end up loosing and being put to death.
* http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAlynching.htm, http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/g_l/lynching/lynching.htm, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching
September 24, 2006 at 11:31 pm
Corinne Neuman
Mr. Death
September 24, 2006
yourmomismad@yahoo.com
Humanities 6: Section 1395
The film Mr. Death is unique, and one that I would not imagine to be very popular at its release. My favorite quote from the movie is when Leuchter says, “There is no difference between a life support system and an execution system – Both have to operate flawlessly.” I felt that was an incredible analogy of Capital Punishment, comparing life with death in the same manner. If capital punishment is not conducted FLAWLESSLY, the person will live – after the experience of torture already subjected to them. Likewise, with life support, if it doesn’t operate flawlessly the person dies.
“I became involved in the manufacture of execution equipment because I was concerned with the deplorable condition of the hardware that’s in most of the states’ prisons which generally results in torture prior to death,” was said in the opening of the film. However, I was intrigued with what made him actually get involved, and how did he get the opportunity? Fred stated towards the beginning of the film that he was contracted to recommend suggestions of improvement for the death chair. I want to know how he was awarded that contract, how was he able to first get involved? How did he do his research? It was because of his familiarity with one project that led to the award of the next project, and the project out of that. Another thing that had me asking questions was that many people in our society are concerned about something but never take action. What is it that prompted his action? How did this opportunity evolve for him? To me, he appeared to be a man who conducted science experiments in his garage. The movie never demonstrated where he gained his knowledge or research, or at what point did he get his “big break.” The closest conclusion that I was able to make was that he developed relationships and knowledge from the people he befriended in the prison system while his fathered worked there.
During the descriptions of the original Electric Chair, Leuchter describes the poor quality of materials that the Electric Chair was made of. He described the wood, as recycled from gallows, and how inmates built the chair. I am curious as to the cost of the Electric Chair, and the cost of the office furniture in the warden’s office. Why would the prison systems cheap out on the chair responsible for condemning the death of a person? Why would they take such a chance on something going wrong? I decided to do more research on my own about the Electric Chair.
I learned that the Electric Chair idea was conceived of in 1880 when a dentist and steamboat engineer, Dr. Albert Southwick saw someone electrocuted by a generator. He described to the Senator how painlessly this person died. It was not until 1889 that the first person, William Kemmler was executed by the Electric Chair. I was more interested in how it was built, what it was built with, and when a reconstruction was deemed
Neuman, Corinne: Page 2
necessary. Besides facts taken from the movie, Mr. Death, I was unable to find this information. Nebraska is the only state that currently requires death by electrocution. The most disgusting part that I have found is that after jolts have been applied to the body, the executioner has to wait for the body to cool before they are deemed dead. Jolts continue to be applied until they can be deemed dead. Further, the body and its organs must cool completely before the dead body can be touched or studied in an autopsy.
Leuchter points out continually throughout the movie, about the irony of contracts that he had been awarded. Starting out with the electric chair, then moving to the design of the lethal injection machine, and gas chambers and gallows. Leuchter states, “One thing had nothing to do with another.” I disagreed with that his perception. “No detail is unimportant, but not so much for the meaning that it conceals within it as for the hold it provides for the power that wishes to seize it” said Foucault(140). I think that this quote relates to this situation. I felt that they all had one major component that they shared – Capital Punishment. While the committee’s that he presented to may not have understood the engineering aspects of his analysis, they understood his experience and I think that they interpreted that experience as the knowledge and expertise to complete the project.
In the movie, Mr. Death, Leuchter appears to work alone not including his wife. No teams, no consultants. If he felt so incapable, and unknowledgeable about the machine he was to build – why did he accept the contracts? I felt that he kept repeating that he was inadequate to complete the projects, but he continued to accept them and fulfill them. If he felt so inadequate, how come he did not hire consultants who were knowledgeable about different aspects of the project to be completed? He could have consulted with chemists, medical personal, electricians; technology gurus, coroners, health officials but I did not see any evidence of that.
Certain aspects of the movie moved away from the theme, and focused on the humanitarian part of Leuchter. The primary scene that comes to my mind about this is toward the beginning when he starts talking about coffee. He shared that he drank 40 cups of coffee, and smoked six packs of cigarettes per day. Why was this shared? To me, part of it made me see Leuchter more as a person then that of a contractor who built death machines. Perhaps, it was to show the audience of the movie of how Leuchter dealt with the trama’s he dealt with daily. He was very concerned with providing a humanitarian death to those sentenced to death. He wanted to do his best to ensure prisoners were subjected to the least amount of torture possible – and that is “how he was able to sleep at night.”
Leuchter became known as Mr. Death, because he was an expert at death. Supposedly, he was the only expert in the field of death that is what awarded him at the opportunity of exploring the Holocaust. Criticism of Leuchter shortly followed, and ultimately his destruction. In this day in age, I agree that the field of death may not be popular but I do not agree that Leuchter was the only expert in the field of death. How about scientists
Neuman, Corinne: Page 3
who conduct autopsies, investigators, chemists, historians? Ignorant as this may be, crime scene investigators?
Leuchter was the wrong person to conduct the research in the Holocaust investigation. The investigation was poorly put together and administered from the beginning. Since the research samples were needed for a court testimony, why would the authorities of Poland be so against cooperating with research? Even if they said no way with a gun to one’s head, the way the sneaked in and took their samples should have been done more professionally. It should also have been conducted with better research of cyanide and the chemistry behind it.
The destruction of Leuchter reminded me of Foucault’s descriptions of non-coercive power at its maximum. He was completely isolated from society, denied food, shelter, a job, and transportation. I cannot see a clearer description of Hagemony power that Foucault described. “Te disciplinary mechanisms secreted a ‘penalty of the norm,’ which is irreducible in its principles and functioning to the traditional penality of the law.” (183) Even his be-loved wife asks him to leave. According to Foucault, “
It was wrong for society to take his right to live away from him, and I don’t condone that. However, I was amazed at Leuchter’s inability to accept criticism and accept responsibility for the mistakes he made. For someone in his position of recommending solutions to execution methods, he out of all people should be open to suggestions. What would have happened if someone questioned his abilities earlier on? What if he was employee instead of a contractor? I see that he very well could have turned his image around, by accepting responsibility. But, he refused. He felt he did nothing wrong, and I don’t think that he did anything wrong with the abilities that he possessed. Problem is, that there were other methods that were more scientific and further knowledge or more concrete research would have led to more accuracy. Unbelievable, is that Leuchter did not take the form of self-referential power. Despite the fact people called him wrong constantly, he did not see himself as doing any wrong.
September 25, 2006 at 1:39 am
Donna Blanchard
Mr. Death
September 24, 2006
moxiedonna@gmail.com
Human 6, Section 1395
Mr. Death chronicles the accomplishments of Fred Leuchter, Jr. and his subsequent “fall from grace” after testifying in the trial of Ernst Zundel that no one was killed in the gas chambers at Auschwitz during the Holocaust. Mr. Leuchter claims to be in favor of the death penalty but states he is for “capital punishment, not capital torture” and this is why he worked with various states to reform their execution methods in order to garner more respect for both the inmates being executed and the prison officials overseeing the executions.
Mr. Death was a difficult film to watch, not only because of the content but also because of the dry way in which it was presented. Mr. Leuchter does not have a particularly charismatic presence and he seems somewhat cocky and mislead. Mr. Leuchter seems to be easily led by Ernst Zundel. Zundel’s hegemonic power over Leuchter influenced Leuchter to travel to Auschwitz and basically declare that the concentration camps were not death camps. Leuchter’s report on his findings as Auschwitz, The End of the Line: The Leuchter Report, was widely scorned by the public but made Leuchter a cult figure among anti-Semitic and Neo-Nazi groups.
Leuchter claims to have redesigned the electric chair to make it a more humane form of execution. He cited horror stories about electric chair executions and decided to rework the electric chair in order to help the inmate die with dignity because “if the execution system doesn’t work the inmate lives”. Leuchter also designed a new lethal injection machine but many of the states who commissioned his machine were unable to use it because it was too complicated. An October 13, 1990 New York Times article quoted an anesthesiologist as saying Leuchter’s system of injection would “render an inmate incapable of screaming about the extreme pain in the form of a severe burning sensation caused by…potassium chloride” ( http://www.vho.org – Mark Weber, Fred Leuchter: Courageous Defender of Historical Truth). Did Leuchter only think his lethal injection machine was more humane because there was no way for the inmate to voice his discomfort? According to Michel Foucault, in order for punishment to be torture it “must produce a certain degree of pain”, “the production of pain is regulated” and it “…meets two demands. It must mark the victim…” (33-34). If Leuchter’s lethal injection really worked as reported, it would definitely be more torturous than other lethal injection machines in use.
Because of his dealings with state prisons and execution methods, Leuchter was asked to assist in the trial of Ernst Zundel and travel to Auschwitz to find proof that the gas chambers did not exist. According to historian Robert Jan van Pelt, who appeared in Mr. Death, Leuchter did not conduct proper research before traveling abroad. Leuchter didn’t consult the Holocaust archives, where he would have found proof of the gas chambers’ existence from 1943 letters detailing their construction. Leuchter scraped and chiseled the gas chambers and had a lab in Massachusetts evaluate his samples. He seemed to be misguided because there were so many things he didn’t take into consideration, including the fact that the buildings had been sitting exposed for nearly 50 years.
When Leuchter concluded that no executions took place in the gas chambers, he had to have known that his findings were not going to go over well. As Foucault stated truth , even if it is wrong, “…cannot be refuted because it was hardened into an unalterable form in the long baking process of history”. Leuchter’s attempt to change history was met with scorn and contempt because the Holocaust is such an emotional part of history. In claiming the gas chambers did not exist, Leuchter is basically saying that thousands of survivors are mistaken or lying. How someone could readily believe that one of the most horrific group tortures and tragedies in history didn’t happen based on faulty evidence is unfathomable. It’s easy to see why Leuchter has been dismissed as an anti-Semite and Neo-Nazi.
Reading the summary and notes on From Lynch Mobs to the Killing State confirmed many things that I thought I already knew. It does seem to me that “people of color” generally get less of a defense than white people and that there are more “people of color” imprisoned and on Death Row for violent crimes against white people than against other people of color. Those simple facts prove that America is not as forward-thinking as we would like the rest of the world to believe. The simple fact that racism still exists in the 21st Century is baffling to me.
Having grown up in a small Southern Illinois town of mostly white people, I have seen firsthand the racism that still flows freely in the South and Midwest. My hometown still has a law on the books that states if any black person is found on the streets after dark, they will be lynched. There were not even any “families of color” in my hometown until the mid-1990s. I became very close with the teenagers from this family and saw how they were discriminated against by other members of my town. As I dated one of the members of the family, I was discriminated against as if I was a blood member of the family. The horrible way they were treated by the townspeople was embarrassing to me and it was hard to see it played out on a daily basis.
I believe that when most people think of lynchings, they think of African American men and women being lynched. It seems to me that these lynchings have been played up in history more than when a person of another race is hung, either as sentence for their crimes or by lynch mobs. On December 2, 1920 here in Sonoma County three white men who were wanted for assaulting two young girls became involved in a shootout with the Sonoma County Sheriff and two detectives from the San Francisco Police Department who had been searching for the men. The three men, who were members of the Howard Street Gang, killed the sheriff and detectives but were subsequently taken into custody and housed at the Sonoma County Jail. During the night a mob of masked people stormed the jail and lynched the three men at the cemetery on Franklin Avenue (Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department: 155 Years of Tradition history book, p 13). And in my hometown in Illinois a white man was lynched by a crowd for allegedly raping his sister-in-law, who later confessed that they had been having an affair. I believe lynchings such as these did not garner as much press attention because they were cases of white people lynching white people and, in the case of the lynching in Illinois, there was a factor of public embarrassment when the hanged man was found to be innocent.
No matter who is lynched, the lynching still demonstrates the power we hold over one other and the power to dehumanize. I believe lynchings of colored people were often used as scare tactics against other colored people, who were forced to watch. The racial inequality demonstrated in lynching is glaringly evident in that more colored people were publicly lynched for their crimes than white people.
I also think that in addition to race issues social and income factors also come into play. As we discussed during Dead Man Walking, very few (if any) people with money are on Death Row. It seems that the better the defense attorney, the less the accused’s chances of going to Death Row. So, if a person is in a higher income bracket and can afford to fight the charges against them with a private attorney instead of a court-appointed attorney, they will probably avoid a death sentence.
Racial and cultural inequality continues today throughout the judicial and prison systems. More people of color are on Death Row than white people. Is it because they don’t get a fair trial or don’t have the money for a decent defense attorney? Or is it because there is still racism after all these years of struggling? Whatever the reason it’s a sobering thought to think that after hundreds of years of fighting for equality, we are still not equal.
September 25, 2006 at 1:46 am
Jade Dant
Mr. Death and Lynching
9/24/06
italianbooty143@yahoo.com
Online 1395
Mr. Death I must say I do feel sorry for his soul at the end. The film Mr. Death was full of disturbing facts. It begins with explanation of different death penalties or execution styles and detailed what goes in the making of each.. Lets just say after watching the movie I think I would rather be executed nowadays than back in the day. This is due to the fact that Frank Leuchter explained how bad the execution process was and the machinery. For instance the people that built that machines were not engineers, but guards who just had pictures to look at. Prisoners were catching on fire, eyes busting out of their heads, having to be repeatedly executed all because the chairs couldn’t keep the voltage at a “safe” (lol, safe because you know how much people care about the prisoners safety) level. Then we have the gallows where people had to be repeatedly hanged because the rope wasn’t aged right or the knot wasn’t placed right. Mr. Crittendon also explained this, where a highly successful hanging was when the prisoner died at the first try. What? Hold up so it sucks first of that you have to be hanged for being black and then they mess up and your chocking to death, and then they let you down for another try. That really sucks. The rest of the movie was about Nazi’s and how Frank Leuchter did testing in “gas chambers” used the mass genocides of Jewish people. Foucault’s quote, “Truth is undoubtedly the sort of error that cannot be refuted…etc.” this could be used in regard to the beliefs of the Neo-Nazi’s and in Frank Leuchter. Some German nationalists were taught that the Holocaust never really happened and because it was written in what they learned they grew up with that lie or in their case their truth. We are
Jade Dant
Mr. Death and Lynchings
told that executions are done in the most humane way, but it is modern torture hidden from the public. Now if you step out of the content and look at character or race, guess what race Mr. Death is??? White, this is because nobody of any other ethnicity would take the job of killing others their race. Mr. Death grew up around death and developed and distance from it, though he didn’t want an execution to be torture, he still made machines to kill at times the wrongly accused. Mr. Death even collected stones from Poland from buildings known the soak in the blood of the innocent who were tortured without blinking. Foucault says, “The reform of criminal law must be read as a strategy for the rearrangement of the power to punish, according to modalities that render it more regular, more effective, more constant (80).” In the movie it clearly shows who sets the punishment, was it more effective I guess if you think trying to kill someone four times is more affective than sure. Was it constant, no because race played its large part on rather you get to enjoy a stay on death row, which I will discuss later. So Frank Leucheter made a point about the guards and warden interacting with the death row inmates for at least a good twenty years before leading them to their death on machines they knew to be faulty. How do you as a person executes someone on something you know will become torture? Foucault says, “Work on the prisoner’s soul must be carried out as often as possible. The prison, though an administrative apparatus, will at the same time be a machine for altering minds”(125). Not only does prison alter the minds of prisoners, but the minds of its guards and employees. The team of people used for an execution who know of the pain have to alter their minds to believe they aren’t killing someone and that they are just doing their job, a way of distancing the mind from believing they are just
Jade Dant
Mr. Death & Lynchings
like the killer they execute. This is because they kill in a cold calculated and well-planned way.
The power of a rich private party or government to twist facts is incredible and frightening. What the German nationalists in Mr. Death believed was only due to the brain washing from his government. The Nazi’s have covered their tracks in many ways, and so do the rich. Facts recovered from Poland were used in court in the favor of the German Nationalist. This is how those with money or the government can skew evidence in their favor. Do you think that blacks on trial for death row were given proper defense or that evidence presented is not the real truth, but just collected in a way to show what the government wants.
This leads me into thinking about the unequal distribution of the death penalty to either blacks or other minorities. The lynching readings was chock full of information about racism in the courts and unfair judgment by WHITE juries. I don’t think the death penalty should be given out if people can’t keep racism out of the facts. According to Charles Ogletree and Austin Sarat in their book From Lynch mobs to the Killing State, “ Nearly 43% since 1976 have been defendants that were either black or Hispanic. Now, of all defendants sentenced to death since 1976 81% of the victims in their cases have been white.” So for those who don’t understand numbers black or Hispanic killers were sentenced to death because they killed a white person, where as a white person can get off with the same murder. You know why I think that is, because people have had racism imbedded in their minds and history. When an all white jury sees that this “colored man” has viciously killed one of their race, and they think of their white children and family
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Mr. Death & Lynchings
and that maybe this black person would kill again of course they vote for the death penalty. According to Charles Ogletree and Austin Sarat in their book From Lynch mobs to the Killing Stat, “Lynchings were highly ritualized public spectacles which transformed formally emancipated into racially marked and hence re-subordinated subjects of white power,” Now Foucault definitely believes that one especially when he says, “The separation of people based on color was the LAW supported by much scripture which as used to maintain a certain hierarchy.” Now if it was law to separate races and others like the Jim Crow laws, why would you think todays laws are any different except that their wording has changed, but it is all the same in every death sentence a white jury hands out to a black man. Maybe the jury of whites are not per say outwardly racist, but are subconsciously making a decision based on fear of color or others different. Say you were walking down the street and you see a scruffy black male in bagging clothes with a hood up, would your heart race and mind scream “run”? Now take the same scenario with a scruffy white skater dude with his hood up and hands in his pockets, would you really walk on the other side of the road? It is plainly imbedded in our nature, which is absolutely sad. Like back in the day quoted from From Lynch mobs to the Killing Stat, “The fact that castration accompanied lynchings literally emasculated and so feminized black men and eliminated them as perceived threats to southern white women”(30). Now why did DMW walking have to do with a WHITE death row inmate where as more than half death row was black? Would some as a audience relate to someone more of their race than some “black guy” who committed a crime. All of this is best said by Charles Ogletree and Austin Sarat , “When we think of this part of our history as ¨best forgotten´, it is expressive of the collective amnesia, the epistemology of ignorance that must be continuously produced if capital punishment’s contemporary contribution to the racial polity is to be elided”(42). Some people feel safe inside their box without knowledge of the world before or now.
September 25, 2006 at 3:00 am
Shalome Atkinson
Mr. Death
9/24/2006
isisonafullmoon@hotmail.com
Human 6 ONLINE
This film Mr. death was not a box office hit that is for sure!
Though siskel and ebert gave it a two thumbs up? In all honesty, I could
not believe the film, and its contents at some points. Was it just me or did
he seem proud of himself and his “accommplishments”? And
oh so monatoned through out it all sometimes I had to wake myself,
possibly because I had problems with the content of this movie, or the
same slow monatone voice??? So did he really fall from his rise? Again I
am still very much on the fence about the death penalty but, more
on the side of its a no go for me. So when this film starts off with the
greatness of his self taught way to make electric chairs work effectively.
Ok well, is this really something we are to be proud of? Do we really need
to gloat that soon every prison was calling him to repair fix or make an
electric chair? Was it just me or, was it not creepy when the electric chair
arrived at his house he had to sit in it? Did anyone see his face? So
intense! I want to know was this man really in love with what he did? Was
it a legal way for him to kill people? Perhaps maybe if he was not able to
participate in the making of the execution devices would he kill other
humans? He just seemed a little strange to me. Then he was cocky
in th efact well if I can make an electric chair certainly I can do a Gallow
and or lethal injection machine. He was proud. And very proud to be pro
capital punishment.
Oh yes no the fall of what he portrayed as greatness. For one
since when does the men who makes execution devices become a person
to discover wether or not the the holocost accured? Hello was there not
enough evidence already? Geez I dont know about you but I sure was
tought about it in history. To have the gaul to say that
it never happened and that all the people were not killed in gas
chambers. Who exactually was he to go to those places and chunk away
at those death camps? Morally that just seems disrespectful especially
when you dont have permission to do such. So as it seems most people
agree. Once his buddy Zundel was found guilty, it seemed as though Mr.
Leuchter was too. He had to say goodbye to his wife and his self taught
career along with being a racist. I guess at the end of the day someone
has to do it he did. And he did it without doubt.
Shalome Atkinson
Lynching
9/24/2006
isisonafullmoon@hotmail.com
Human 6 ONLINE
Thank you Ben for your efforts of getting us this material!
Well, Lynching itself not being an easy topic however, far more interesting
that Mr. Death (sorry for the opinion). So basically it seems to me a racial
issue about the lynching? As time goes on more laws come into play about
lynching as capital punisment. Such as proving that race was a factor in
the desision for the death penalty. It a amazed me that stated in the first
paragraph on page 3 that the death penalty is a tool that has been used
thoughout history to oppress racial minorities. Laws such as execuction of
a the mentally retarded is cruel and unusual punishment. Well, dont you
think most people who kill others have a mental issue of sorts? I mean
look at all the studies they do on cereal killers and their brains?
Those studies indicate that they have a brain imbalance. So then would
that not be cruel and unusual punishment?
Sadly enough It still shows that there is a huge racial difference
in those who are reciveing the death penalty. However anyone notice how
most really off the wall killers exp Jeffery Dahmer, Ted Bundy, John
Wayne Gasey, Green river killer were all white? Hello! If I was to agree to
the death penalty it would be in these cases most likely. So how is it that
the minorities get the death penalty? And Lynching that still ocurrs
illegally is the white man hanging the minority. What is up with that? I tell
you this system is something.
September 25, 2006 at 3:02 am
Guys and Gals I am so sorry I do not know why it posted this way I even corrected it before I posted it I hoep you can read through it ok. SOrry again
September 25, 2006 at 3:39 am
Matthew Phillips
Mr. Death
9/24/06
bobomrp@yahoo.com
American Cultures 1395
The film Mr. Death follows Fred Leuchter from his rise as an expert on engineering execution devices for States to his fall as a believer that the Nazis did not use gas chambers to kill millions of people during the holocaust. I think that Fred, albeit a little strange, had good intentions when he decided to fix a State’s electric chair so it worked properly. He was concerned that the ancient electric chair was created by an electrician and that it was not really engineered properly. He set about to fix the problems that were associated with the chair. He actually had the electric chair delivered to his home, where he worked on it. It was a bit creepy when he had himself strapped into it. Some problems he identified were the fact that the electric chairs sometimes did not kill effectively, that people were being overly cooked when they didn’t have to be, that the straps were not easy to undo after the execution, that the chairs were too small, and that there was no containment system for urine. Fred made the chair larger while maintaining its original look, he added better restraints, and he created a better power system and specific electrocution sequence that was supposed to ensure that there was no cruel and unusual punishment.
Fred became quite successful and more States began asking him to look at their execution devices. He became the go to man when it came to execution devices, despite his admitted lack of knowledge and expertise in some of the devices. He said that when it was known he could upgrade the electric chair prisons had him look at their gallows and even help create the lethal injection machine even though he had no experience with those devices. He really became and engineer of death. He figured out how to make devices better at killing while maintaining the dignity and humanity of the prisoner being put to death. This is why I think that Fred was nothing but good intentioned.
I think that Fred’s ego became his downfall. He was a smart man, but I think he started working well outside of his abilities and expertise and refused to realize it. When he was asked to look into the gas chambers at Nazi concentration camps to determine if the holocaust really happened I was amazed that he thought he was qualified to do it. Watching his “scientific” method and the conclusions he came to was crazy. I can’t believe that by running around and scraping a few samples of fifty-plus year old building ruins and having them analyzed for gas residue could convince anyone, especially himself, that the holocaust did not happen. It was totally absurd. There was no scientific method to his work. The man who analyzed the samples and determined that there was no gas residue even said that if he had been told what the test was really for he would have done a completely different test and the results could have been different. I can see why Fred lost his reputation.
As far as tying this film in with Dead Man Walking, I know the book mentioned that executions had been suspended for a period of time to look into effectiveness and whether they were cruel and unusual and maybe Fred Leuchter’s work helped result in executions resuming. This is just a thought, I don’t know if it’s true.
Fred Leuchter’s work to make the apparatus of the death penalty function better, or more humane, is an example of what Foucault talks about when he says that punishing “better” merely places the power to punish more deeply into society. (Pg. 82) By portraying the death penalty as painless, it somehow makes it okay. It loses its violence and therefore remains in our society, despite the fact that it is no different than the crime it is punishing.
The notes from the book Lynch mobs to the Killing State follow the history of the “Racial Contract” and how it relates to the death penalty. The majority of death row inmates are Black, convicted of black on white murders, even though the majority of murders by Black people are of other Black people. Since the civil war Black people have always been the “minority” and often thought of as a lesser class, but the obviousness of that class distinction has become more invisible, while the effects have remained, especially when it comes to the death penalty. Over time things have changed from Blacks being lynched by mobs, to the death penalty by hanging, to the electric chair removed from sight in the prison, to the lethal injection, which seemingly removes race from thought. As a person’s color is removed from the process of the law, it still remains, only out of plain sight. An example is how it is possible for juries to be all white, when the defendant is not. How crimes that are more likely to be committed by minorities have harsher punishments under the law. It is things like that which perpetuate the racial contract, but do it so invisibly that the people perpetuating it may not even comprehend what they are doing. Or maybe they do.
September 25, 2006 at 3:49 am
Ray Hill
Human. 6 1395
Sept. 24, 2006
Assignment # 4
Page 1
Lynching is defined by the American Heritage Dictionary as “To execute without due process of law, especially to hang, as by a mob”. Some say that the word was derived from the name of Charles Lynch (1736-96), a justice of the peace from Virginia that administered “rough justice”(www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk). There are others who feel that the word was derived from the name of William Lynch who was the author of “Lynch Law”. This law, which formed from an agreement with the Virginian state legislature on September 12, 1782, enabled William Lynch to “pursue and punish criminals in Pittsylvania County, without due process of law…” due to the fact that legal proceedings in that area lacked “adequate provision of the courts”(www.wikipedia.com). Either way, this word has come to represent how many people were put to death during different times in our “civilized” country.
When most people hear the word “lynching” they think of the KKK and of violence against African Americans in our country. That could be perhaps that after the establishment of the Ku Klux Klan in 1867, the amount African American being lynched increased dramatically. “It has been estimated that between 1880 and 1920, an average of two African Americans a week were lynched in the United States.” Even through the 1950’s, during the Civil Rights Movement, lynching was still used as a form of “terrorizing the local black population” (www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk).
Eventually the practice of public executions waned and the United States began to practice punishment out of the view of the public (ie: gas chambers, electric chair, lethal injection). We now moved from public hangings to a more “civilized” form of punishment by death. That transfer, from public to private executions, is what led to the start of our current death penalty. Instead of hanging a person, we send them to prison where they await their death on death row. Instead of lynching them in front of a crowd, we select a few people to witness and carry out the death.
According to Wikipedia.com, over 67% of capital convictions are overturned “mainly on procedural grounds of incompetent legal counsel, police or prosecutors who suppressed evidence and judges who gave jurors the wrong instructions.” In the summary of “From Lynch mobs to the Killing State”, it states “Over the past five years more than 100 death row inmates have not only been removed from death row but freed from prison altogether due to the DNA testing of evidence stored from the original crime scene…” (3). These two facts, while taken alone or coupled, lead me to believe that our current death penalty still isn’t the “right” way. What about those people who were executed before the DNA testing found their innocence?? Even one person wrongly executed is one too many.
As with many of the readings we’ve done in this class, these summaries (of “From Lynch mobs to the Killing State” and the first chapter of “Capital Punishment as Legal
Ray Hill
Human. 6 1395
Sept. 24, 2006
Assignment # 4
Page 2
Lynching”) were eye openers. After reading the both of the summaries I knew there had to be more information out there regarding the statistics of who resides on death row. I did a little searching and came across Amnesty International’s website. Browsing through their articles on the death penalty I was shocked at the statistics I found: In 2003 almost 300 African Americans had been executed since the resuming of “judicial killing” in 1977; African Americans make up only 12% of the national population but they make up over 40% of death row inmates; at least one in five African Americans executed since 1977 were convicted by an all white jury (all: http://www.web.amnesty.org). The summary of “From Lynch mobs…” gives even more facts: “There are powerful race-of-victim effects in the decisions about who will receive a death sentence. Nearly 43% since 1976 have been defendants that were either black or Hispanic. Now, of all defendants sentenced to death since 1976, 81% of the victims in their cases have been white” (2).
The socio economic status of a person (along with their race and sex) also helps determine whether he will get the death penalty or not. As we all know, there are no rich men on death row. In “Dead Man Walking” we read statistics about the poverty in our country “In 1989 37.3 million working Americans…received incomes below $15,000.” (Page
We also read on that same page how it’s easier for a person to “run a bag” of cocaine for extra money, due the fact that if he gets a “normal” job he runs the risk of having money deducted from his families AFDC checks. Because of this, because young people are being “forced” in a sense to commit crimes due to their socio economic status, we are seeing more and more of our “working poor” (and poor) in our prisons. Someone who makes less then $15,000 a year is not going to be able to afford adequate representation should they need it and will most likely end up a statistic (on death row).
Mr. Death is the story of Fred Leuchter. It is the story of his rise to fame and his quick fall into obscurity. Leuchter grows up around the prison system because his father is a prison guard. He is fascinated with the capital punishment of his childhood-death by hanging. He learns that this form of the death penalty is not always the most efficient as a person usually has to be dropped more than one time, the knot has to be secured in just the right place on the person’s neck and the person has to fall “just right”. It is partially due to this that Leuchter decides to go into the business of “upgrading” the electric chair. Leuchter says he’s making capital punishment more human and that he has compassion for his inmates. He says that he “didn’t want to see people tortured”. At this point in the movie I find myself going along with the story, not questioning a word that comes out of Leuchters mouth. Why would I? He’s the expert, right?
Eventually, due to his experience and credentials, Leuchter is asked to go to Germany to study the Holocaust. He is asked to study the “alleged” gas chambers at Auschwitz and determine if they were in fact used to kill the prisoners. Ernst Zundel was on trial
Ray Hill
Human. 6 1395
Sept. 24, 2006
Assignment # 4
Page 3
for spreading false rumors about the Holocaust and he is who asked Leuchter to do this “study”. Leuchter happily agrees and packs up his new wife, his chisel and his cameras. As he starts to chip away at the walls of the chambers and starts to talk about how he has a “plan” if they are caught, I find myself wondering what exactly he thinks he’s doing. I’m beginning to wonder just what sort of person Fred Leuchter is. What kind of person even begins to think that the Holocaust didn’t happen? Who in their right mind doesn’t believe that the gas chambers were just that-chambers used to kill many, many innocent people?
Ultimately the samples that Leuchter took of the gas chambers showed no sign of any cyanide in them. The man who examined the findings was not told up front about where they were from (this was done in hopes of keeping him unbiased but in fact ended up corrupting the study). The findings were smashed into dust and, thus, obliterating any traces of cyanide that would be found. After the hearings, this examiner was told where the findings were from and what exactly the case was concerning and he was shocked. He stated that, had he known where the findings were from, he never would have smashed them-he would have conducted other tests.
It’s around this time that we learn just what credentials Leuchter has-none. He has work experience but no engineering degree. Why was he the expert in the electric chair? Because someone said he was? Was it simply a case of being in the right place at the right time? The scene when Leuchter is being led from court and is smiling and almost waving to the crowd, made me sick to my stomach. Here was a man who was so caught up in his own fame that he no longer thought about what was true-only about what made him “bigger”. Foucault’s referential power came into mind here …if we’re told something often enough, we begin to believe it. Fred Leuchter was told that he was the “expert” and he began to believe it. He believed it to the point that he lost his wife, his career and his livelihood. After everything that happened-after the trial ended, after his wife left him, after the public turned its back on him, Leuchter still stayed true to himself. He still stood up for his work, he still stood up for his findings and he even still tried to sell the used electric chair that was in his possession.
September 25, 2006 at 3:57 am
Page 1 of 4
Todd Eastman
Mr. Death / Lynching
09/24/06
Todd.eastman@comcast.net
HUMAN 6 American Cultures, Section 1395
Starting with “From Lynch Mobs to the Killing State: Race and the Death Penalty in America” – In the early discussion of how race-of-victim effects who receives the death penalty it says – “Nearly 43% since 1976 have been defendants that were either black or Hispanic. Now, of all defendants sentenced to death since 1976 81% of the victims in their cases have been white.” These numbers are startling, but at the same time, I wish I had a little more information to go on. Proclaiming my own ignorance, I don’t really know what the ratio of black and/or Hispanic people there are in the U.S., versus those who are white. But assuming that black and Hispanic people are in the minority, and whites are in the majority, doesn’t it make sense from a statistical point of view that there would be less than 50% black or Hispanic murderers, and a significantly higher number of whites would be the victims of these crimes? I am by no means arguing the validity of the statistics; I simply wish I had more context to evaluate it with.
However, I would argue with the statement: “The death penalty is and has always been rarely a punishment used objectively against those deserving of it – it has been instead a tool that has been used throughout history to oppress racial minorities esp afro Americans.” This may be true when considering U.S. History by itself, but if we look at the history of the rest of the world, this statement cannot be applied. If we change the words from “racial minorities” to “lower class minorities” (ala Foucault) then I would agree with the statement.
One issue that was brought up is one that I definitely agreed with. How is it we have strayed so far from the 6th Amendment, “Right to Trial By Impartial Jury”? How does anyone read into this Amendment the right to pick and chose jurors based on their race? In my opinion, an impartial jury should consist of a group of randomly chosen citizens who fall within the same socio-economic category as the accused.
I’m not sure that I agree with the contention that lynching, by definition, is the hanging of a black person. According to “The Random House College Dictionary”, lynching is defined as: “the act or an instance of a mob’s killing of a person, esp. by hanging”. My understanding of the term is an act committed by a mob in order to take justice away from the law and into their own hands. I will agree that lynching was very prominent during the period of “Reconstruction” after the Civil War with the majority of the victims being black or sympathizers, but the practice seemed to continue into our expansion to the west and the use of “prairie” law, where there were no courts nearby, and when
Page 2 of 4
Todd Eastman
Mr. Death / Lynching
09/24/06
someone committed a crime, the people themselves would judge and condemn the accused, usually by hanging. More often than not, these were white people. These spectacles were also considered “entertaining” and done in public, for all to see.
I found the statement – “The fact that castration accompanied lynchings literally emasculated and so feminized black men and eliminated them as perceived threats to southern white women” to be somewhat presumptive. Throughout history, the act of castration has been perceived as the ultimate way to make a man no longer a man. But the idea that they did this with the thought in mind that it would also protect their women? I thought the authors may have gone just a bit too far with that contention.
In general, I found the thoughts expressed in the first chapter to be enlightening, with obvious bits of truth. Much of what the authors have to say are things worthy of being thought about. But overall, I think they go too far by encompassing every act of lynching or mob violence as whites using their racial power over blacks as their authority.
The authors also try to point at executions (the death penalty) as yet another form of racism. I have no doubt that there is a racial component to the death penalty, perhaps even a large component – but certainly not the sole consideration upon which the sentence is imposed.
Now onwards to Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. The first thought that struck me was amazement at the fact that Leuchter portrays himself in this documentary. I was expecting a one sided view based on history. I would be very interested in knowing Leuchter’s opinion of the movie that he himself participated in making. Although I disagree with his findings, he is one of those eccentric people that define our country’s history who I would love to sit down and chat with.
The first part of the film concentrates on Leuchter’s “career path.” Starting with being taken to the prison where his father worked, he is exposed to the world of the death penalty and state executions. The man actually shows genuine concern for the inhumanity of the existing ways the death penalty was carried out. He even states that he supported “capital punishment, not capital torture.” But at the same time, he displays a certain lack of compassion for those who have been executed. One reference actually had me laughing when, in all seriousness, Leuchter describes how the electric chair, improperly used, would cause the executed person’s flesh being like “meat falling off a cooked chicken”. His dialogue about the executed becoming incontinent, or how stark
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Todd Eastman
Mr. Death / Lynching
09/24/06
the execution room was, suggesting pictures on the wall or even a TV to watch were surreal, but he was obviously being sincere.
He even casually makes fun of himself by describing how he went from redesigning the electric chair, to designing the lethal injection device, to becoming an expert on gallows, and eventually being considered an expert on executions. Unfortunately, this perceived expertise led to Leuchter being contacted by Ernst Zundel, a German national living in Canada. Zundel was being tried for publishing works on Holocaust denial, and asked Leuchter to investigate and act as his expert witness. Leuchter traveled to Auschwitz and Birkenau to examine the structures identified as gas chambers, and concluded that they could not have been used as gas chambers as claimed. It is at this point where it becomes obvious Leuchter has fallen under his own spell, now believing himself to actually be an expert and thinking that he was qualified to do such an investigation. I have no training in forensics, yet even I know that his techniques and methods were completely amateurish and his results should never have been used in a court of law.
Personally, I think that Leuchter is an extremely intelligent, yet eccentric man. Granted, he was not educated as an Engineer, his major was actually in History. But he also holds patents on a number of his inventions and modifications. I find myself sitting on the fence when the question is asked: Is he anti-Semitic, or simply extremely naïve? On one hand, he did make remarks against the Jewish community that he perceived as being partly at fault for the ruination of his life and career. Yet, he also raised some valid points about the concentration camps and the gas chambers. I myself have always wondered why the Nazis chose gas chambers. As Leuchter himself pointed out, bullets would have been much cheaper. It seems to me that most of his positions about the non-existence of the gas chambers were based on faulty logic. He couldn’t conceive of how such a facility would work, and the lack of cyanide residue on his incorrectly tested samples led him to believe it didn’t exist.
As to why he chose to testify on behalf of Zundel, Leuchter says there were two issues. The first being the issue of freedom of speech and freedom of belief, and the second being the fact that Zundel was being charged with a felony, not just a misdemeanor, and could lead to a sentence of 25 years in prison. Of course, I imagine that the $35,000 that Zundel paid Leuchter may have influenced his decision as well.
While researching this case and the making of the film, I found it very interesting that when Errol Morris, the director of Mr. Death, originally screened an early version of the film for a Harvard film class, he found that the students reacted by either believing
Page 4 of 4
Todd Eastman
Mr. Death / Lynching
09/24/06
Leuchter’s side of the story or by condemning the film as a piece of Holocaust denial. Errol Morris re-edited the film to include additional interviews with people who condemn Leuchter with varying intensity. Morris felt this last step should have been unnecessary, since, to him, Leuchter was so obviously misguided in much of what he says in the film.(1)
As to how the book and this movie can be tied into Foucault, I can see how “pastoral power” is used to remove “undesirables” from society, also known as prison. Perhaps this is an odd interpretation, but I can point to “panoptical” power in the sense that Leuchter was unaware that modern television and the media is constantly watching us, and any misstep is immediately noted and broadcast. Could it also be said that “self-referential” power is at work by Leuchter himself? After being accused time after time of being a revisionist, did he finally start to believe it was true and his behaviors and beliefs were modified? Finally, there is the use of racial segregation and separation, in use within the prison system, as well as between historians and revisionists when considering the Holocaust.
(1) From an interview with Errol Morris conducted by Ron Rosenbaum, in the Fall of 1999 – http://errolmorris.com/content/interview/moma1999.html
September 25, 2006 at 4:40 am
Page 1
Crystal Pardo
September 24, 2006
Response to Lynching – Week 5
Pardofam4@sbcglobal.net
American Cultures 1395
Our world has seemed to come a long way from prejudice, but it still seems to play a part in criminals and how they are sentenced. If you are to kill a person of color it is looked upon less than if a person of color was to kill a white person. Why is that? Murder is murder and it should be handled according to the law in which the state it was committed. Aren’t lawyer’s, juror’s and judge’s sworn in under oath so they can make their decisions honestly and not by being prejudice? It makes me disgusted that just because the color of someone’s skin is darker they are looked at differently. I am white, but my children being half hispanic and very dark complected makes me wonder if they will be judged as adults because of their skin color.
Still not knowing if I am for or against the Death Penalty, in reading this article on Lynching it was interesting to learn facts that are related to criminals and the Death Penalty. I found it interesting that since 1976 the 43% of defendants that were either black or Hispanic and have now been sentenced to death, 81% of their victims were white. Mostly every time I hear the news talking about a crime or a murder it is black on black crime or Mexican’s killing their own people because of gang activity. What we hear on the news is not always what is really going on in the world. Or it is not what the world wants to believe.
It’s interesting to me that in a world in which we all live in, there are different laws and ways of dealing with punishment just by the state in which you live in. If a person who was to commit a crime only knew of what they were up against in the state where they committed the crime, they make think twice about committing that crime in that state. From what I know, California which still uses the Death Penalty is one of the states that seems to be more lenient on people who commit crimes. So what about those other states that don’t use the Death Penalty? Do people just sit in prison until they die of old age?
Who makes the decision on what type of punishment is going to be used for each specific state? Why is it that some states use lethal injection and others use the electric chair? The article states that in the past five years more than 100 death row inmates have been removed from death row and even released altogether from prison due to DNA testing of evidence from the original crime scene. Why was this DNA not used in the original trial?
So in knowing this it makes me think of how screwed up our judicial system is that a person could go all the way to death row for a crime that they didn’t even commit. One day you could be living your life as a normal citizen and then all of a sudden that could be taken away because you became a suspect to a crime you knew nothing about. Where are your rights in that?
September 25, 2006 at 5:31 am
Corinne Neuman
Lynching
September 24, 2006
yourmomismad@yahoo.com
Humanities 6: Section 1395
I must admit that until this time, I have been unfamiliar with the term lynching. So, reading From Lynch mobs to the Killing State was difficult to comprehend. I found it difficult to jump into this reading and be able to follow. One of my first questions, who is or was Mc Cleskey? I felt out of the loop, and that I must be completely ignorant. Lynching is when people take the law into their own hands, in order to kill a suspected person. This is most common among the “mob” or even more popular amoung the KKK after the civil war movement. “The purpose of a spectacle lynching was to produce and reproduce the conditions of racial domination within the context of a regime that openly affirmed white superiority.”
When we read Dead Man Walking we were introduced to the concept that there are far more people of racial backgrounds on Death Row, then whites. More importantly however, was the race of the victim. As stated in From Lynch mobs to the Killing State,
“of all defendants sentenced to death since 1976 81% of the victims in their cases have been white.” This is disgusting to me, it clearly says that it is worse to kill a white person. I think that this is absolutely true. When we see cases heavily publicized it is nearly always in connection to the killing of a white person. I also find it interesting that when a white person is killed, the good is always remembered by means of the press. If the media decides to publicize the murder of a person of racial backgrounds, the skeltons in the closet are always tried to be discovered.
So out of curiousity I visisted the website of California’s Department of Corrections to see the racial statistics of people serving on death row. Out of 653 Death Row Inmates, only 15 are women. According to the California Department of Corrections, in July of 2006 39% of condemned death row inmates are white, 35% are black, 19% Hispanic, and 6% Other. These statistics don’t entirely seem to line up with what we are being told. Could it be that I am only looking at California where there is a higher proportion of whites than in other states? I think that is true. However, OJ Simpson was found innocent in the killing of Nicole Simpson .
When we look at the statistics of death row inmates, it is easy to say that there is a high percentage of poor and and a high percentage of African American. Referring back to Foucault two forms of non-coercive power come to my mind. The first is self referential power. Perhaps people who live in areas, (or even more so for the children who grow up in poverty), begin to believe that they are criminals because of where or how they live. For instance, lets take a look at Southwest Santa Rosa made up of primarily Hispanics. They have been stereotyped again and again by the Press Democrat for the high level of gang activity and affiliations. It has been made to believe that if someone is Hispanic and lives in Southwest Santa Rosa that they most likely are gang affiliated. By being told this repeatedly, one may soon believe that they are gang affiliated when they truly are not.
Corinne Neuman, Page 2
The other form of power that I am reminded of is that of panoptical where someone is always watching, and the theory is that people will not do wrong if they know that they are being watched. In areas that have high diversity and poverty rates, it becomes known how the police turn their backs to the crime that is taking place. So perhaps people are more violent in these areas because they know that no one is watching. Could some of these thoughts also be implications of the high rates among African Americans and people from backgrounds of poverty?
There is a rumor that tends to make its way through our nation again and again. That rumor is that a person suspected of hurting a child, will not survive prison. It is said that the prisoners have no tolerance of hurting a child, and that the prisoners will take justice into their own hands. I often wondered if this was actually true, or if it was meant as a deterant to keep people from committing the horrible crimes. Within our prison walls, Aryan Brotherhood which formed in San Quentin is most known for lynching. I think it is very dangerous to let people take justice into their own hands, power is abused and justice becomes more of a place of bigotry and hatred then justice.
September 25, 2006 at 5:39 am
Sarah Bellomo
Dr Death#1
Assignment#5
9/24/2006
A8006@aol.com
Section#1395
Dr. Death was made much differently than I thought it was going to be. I expected a regular movie, not a documentary. I guess this was a little in-between. Fred Leuchter Jr. was not your everyday man. He was raised around the prison system so he saw things within the prison from a different perspective. He starts off talking about the electric chair and how he came to be the person whom fixed them. He fixed the electric chairs for the abundance of states and made them up to par for conducting less painful deaths of its victims. Leuchter states many times how a majority of electric chairs which are used within the different states that use that as their type of execution are not up to par. Leuchter starts that there has been many instances where the person to be executed in fact does not die and has to be electrocuted more than once. He states that this is inhumane and that there must be a way for the prisoner not to suffer as they have been suffering. There must be a better way to do it. Leuchter states that the guards as well as the Warden’s of the prisons have the hardest task being that of performing the executions. Leuchter states that the Warden’s and guards grow close to the inmates because they see them every day; they grow personal relationships with the prisoners. This makes it harder to see them get killed. They see them as regular people who have just made the mistake
Sarah Bellomo
Dr. Death#1
Assignment#5
of committing a crime, which is punishable with death. I feel that this is a very similar subject as something that I read in Foucault’s book Discipline and Punish.
Here is a passage from the original source “discipline and Punish”. The following passage is the summary of a section similar to what I am referring to.
ORIGINAL SOURCE
The reduction in Penal severity in the last 200 years is a phenomenon which legal historians are well acquainted. But, for a long time, it has been regarded in an overall way as a quantitative phenomenon: Less cruelty less pain, more kindness, more respect, more “humanity”. In fact these changes are accompanied by a displacement in the very object of the punitive operation. Is there a diminution of intensity? There is certainly a change of objective.
PG#16 paragraph 3
What I feel is in the same way that the penal punishment was described in this passage, it is the same within the description from Leuchter. They believe that these prisoners should be treated as regular people. The prisoners should receive the same respect and the same kindness. However what I do question is their complete reasoning for changing the way that they execute people. I almost am certain that it is not solely because of the inhumane treatment that has been previously enacted. I feel that it is because of the executioner’s conscience. I feel that it is what the executioner has to deal with mentally while committing these killings. If the executioner thinks that the prisoner was not in any
Sarah Bellomo
Dr. Death#1
Assignment#5
pain while he or she was being killed there is not as much guilt on the executioner’s chest. Otherwise, why would it really matter if the prisoner endured pain while being killed? In the end the result would still be the same. The result of the death of the prisoner.
In Foucault’s “discipline and Punish” on page #57, paragraph 3 it states with words to the effect of “ that of all the reasons why punishment that was not in the least ashamed of being atrocious was replaced by punishment that was to claim the honour of being humane, there is one that must be analyzed at once, for it is internal to the public execution itself: at once an element of it’s functioning and the principal of its perpetual disorder.
I feel that this was in fact stating that punishment was not being changed because of how corporal or painful it might be. But in fact because of the conscience of the executioner, and our public for supporting the cause. All of the other reasons that they present to us are excuses. There is no way of killing someone that is going to change the fact that you killed someone and they are in fact dead regardless of the manner of the killing.
Foucault stated and predicted a lot of things that happened and which are still happening today. People are always looking for a way to justify crimes and punishments. Trying to find ways to make it look better to the public and make it feel better to them.
Sarah Bellomo
Dr. Death#1
Assignment#5
Leuchter seemed not to be an exception to this fact. He stated over and over again how he was trying to fix the executions so that the prisoners would not be in any pain while dying. But after all of that explanation that he was trying to convince the viewer with, he then took it upon himself to go to Poland to prove that the Holocaust was a Hoax. Leuchter went and got many samples of brick, walls, and floor from the concentration camps to test f or the presence of cyanide. However, when he returned to the United States he placed these samples into a testing lab, which didn’t know the reasoning for the tests, nor the substances being tested. The tests concluded no presence of cyanide. The scientist whom tested these particles later stated that when he had become knowledgeable as to what they were testing it was impossible to conclude such findings. The samples had been smashed for testing and to make an accurate test for cyanide, only the surface of the samples could be tested. Leuchter thinks that he proved the Holocaust was a hoax. The people of the world think that Leuchter is making a mockery of one of the biggest genocides there was.
If reference as to what I feel this film had in common with the book and movie “Dead man walking”, there are a few things I could tell. First of all since this documentary was in reference to the electric chair and fair and humane treatment, it is basically on the same subject just different reference. The movie and book were about a prisoner and his rights as a regular person. The prisoner’s humane treatment, and his right to fight his case.
Sarah Bellomo
Dr. Death#1
Assignment#5
When Leuchter talks about a prisoner’s right to die without pain, it is not exactly the same thing but the movie, book and documentary are about fair treatment whether it is in dying or in life. When Leuchter went to Poland to find out whether he could prove that the story of the Holocaust was a lie or not the facts that he went to prove or disprove facts was the same in the case from “dead man walking”. The prisoner in “dead man walking” also was trying to prove his case and get evidence to prove his innocence (in the book not the movie). The law works the same way whether you are inside ready to die or outside walking the street. It is innocent until proven guilty. The assumed guilty are not always really guilty, and the truly guilty are not always prosecuted, but while humane punishment and fair trial is in tact at least people have a chance to plead their case.
September 25, 2006 at 6:37 am
Jereme Robinson
Assignment #4 – Mr. Death
September 24th, 2006
Preludekid212@aol.com
Human 6 – Section 1395
The movie Mr. Death is a true story of a man named Fred Leuchter and his rise to fame. As a young boy he grew up living the prison system because he dad was a well respected prison guard that loved his job. Going up he had a weird passion your people being but to death by hanging. He always had questions and interests in this type of punishment. In the movie Fred tells about how he would play with other prison guard’s children in the electric chair and was tough that the death penalty was human. Fred and Foucault had very similar childhood as in 1981 Foucault said, “I cannot experience pleasure. I have very early memories of an absolutely threatening world that could crush us. To have lived as an adolescent in a situation that had to end, that had to lead to another world, for better or for worse, was to have the impression of spending one’s entire childhood at night waiting for dawn. That prospect of another world marked the people of my generation, and we have carried with us, perhaps to excess, a dream of Apocalypse”. Basically says as a child growing up around death and violence it’s hard to not accept in when you are older. Leuchter went on to make an electric chair for Tennessee, since he had a back ground in electric engineering.
Jereme Robinson
Assignment #4 – Mr. Death
Leuchter became known as Mr. Death, because he was an expert at death. They say he was the only expert in the field of death at the time which wasn’t true but gave Leuchter the opportunity to go to Germany to study the Holocaust concentration camp at Auschwitz and to learn about how the gas chamber worked for the Nazi party. Fred returned for his assignment in Germany and release a report for the courts saying that because of the lack of cyanide in his samples and test there was no Holocaust. He never researched records or looked at the transcripts of interviews from the survivors themselves. He based his report solely on his shoddy investigation looking for cyanide gas. By saying the statement his reputation as Dr. Death went right down the drain with most Americans. The Holocaust is a very important part in American history and to say that it never exited for pretty ballsy to say. He did gain respect from Nazi and KKK group but surly not from the Jewish community.
Jereme Robinson
Assignment #4 – Mr. Death
For me when I think of the word lynching I think of African American Being hung as far back as the 1800’s. Also when I think a little deeper I realize that in the 1700’s lynching in Europe was the only method of punishment known. Today to take a great deal for a criminal to be put on death row but back then If you took a apple from someone you would be put to death by lynching. I think people relate it to African Americans because racism today to more centered towards blacks and the most recent lynching in the 1980’s was done to an African American man by a well know racist group, the KKK. Reading the summary and notes on From Lynch Mobs to the Killing State confirmed many things that I thought I already knew. Things like “people of color” occupy more death row space in America then any other race. The Synopsis also shows that crimes committed by “white” people against “colored people” have received less of a punishment. For me I believe there is another side to this. For me working for a police department and being white I have to deal with the facts of racism against black. What I mean by this is that because people of color or being punished by a white cop then there must be some type of racism going on and we are only doing this because the color of the persons skin. For me this is not true at all I treat everyone with the same respects but I’m sure somewhere out there in the world police officers are guilty for this.
Spectacle lynching was a way to show domination of whites over the blacks. Lynching during the civil war and after were public events, similar to a boxing fight, where people would come from all over to view the torture of a “Black”.
September 25, 2006 at 6:39 am
Missy Cook
Mr. Death and Lynching
9/23/06
eskimomissy@comcast.net
Human 6 1395
Page 1
The movie Mr. Death was interesting and disturbing all at the same time. The movie was about Fred A. Leuchter Jr., and his life. Growing up his dad worked at a prison and at the age of 4 and on he went to work with his dad. So he was exposed to the inner workings of prisons early in his life. He became involved with redesigning many of the states electric chairs and gallows hanging devices, gas chambers, and designed the lethal injection automated machine. He did this because he said he wanted to provide a more humane way for death row inmates to die. He did not have a formal education in engineering of electrical devices but this did not seem to matter to the people that where hiring him. All they knew is that he designed an electric chair in Tennessee and that it worked, so he must be qualified to fix any death machine. For a while his services where much sought after. At one point in the movie Leuchter compared himself and his services for proving a more humane way to die as him being Jesus, Marxist or Hitler-like. This relates to Foucault when he talks about forms of power. It was as if Leuchter reasoned his services as providing the inmates a service that was for their own good (in a more humane way to die); he was practicing pastoral power. This half of his life was what the first part of the movie was about. He then married a waitress and shortly after this he was asked by a revolutionist, Ernst Zundel to help prove that there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz. Zundel hired him as an expert witness/scientist in a court case to prove that the Holocaust did not happen. Leuchter, his new wife and camera crew traveled to the death camp ruins in Auschwitz and he proceeded to collect samples of the
Missy Cook
Mr. Death and Lynching
9/23/06
eskimomissy@comcast.net
Human 6 1395
Page 2
inner walls of the gas chambers and surrounding buildings. He collected these samples because he wanted them tested for cyanide. Everything was documented and filmed. It seemed as if he had no regard for being at the death camps or for the history of what had happened there or for the lives that were taken. Even if he didn’t believe that there were no gas chambers there he still could have shown some respect for the history of the place. I think here Leuchter was practicing bio-power. He was so caught up in collecting samples he didn’t see the bigger picture of the death camps, even though it was right in front of his face. He then proceeded to have the samples tested in a laboratory in the United States. He did not tell the laboratory where the samples where from or how to handle them. The samples came back with a negative presence of cyanide. The scientist who worked at the laboratory spoke on the film and stated that if he knew he was supposed to be testing for cyanide he the would have done the tests completely different, due to the fact that cyanide only penetrates things like walls 10 microns. But when he performed the test on the samples he was given he had crushed the samples up, and then tested the crushed material for traces of poison. It was no wonder there was no trace of cyanide. However, Leuchter ran with the negative results and published a report that the Holocaust could not have happened and that there where no evidence of gas chambers. It was as if he did not want to see the truth and at any cost he was going to believe what he wanted. The report that he published became very popular with the Nazis non-holocaust believers and he was asked to speak at many conferences. It was as if he finally found a
Missy Cook
Mr. Death and Lynching
9/23/06
eskimomissy@comcast.net
Human 6 1395
Page 3
place to fit in and be accepted. It was short lived. As soon as the prison and public found out about his involvement his services where no longer wanted. He was basically shunned in the United States. I think the Foucault quote, “People know what they do; they frequently know what they do; but they don’t know is what they do do does,” fits here perfectly. I don’t know if Leuchter knew the ramifications of his investigation or the report in advance if he would have actually changed any of his actions. It seemed as if he still stood by the report and believed his findings to be true. Which to me is very sad and pathetic, especially since his samples where known to be tested wrong and this is what he mainly based his report on.
Lynching
I read the synopsis of From Lynch mobs to the Killing State I can see the correlation of lynching and the death penalty. I was surprised to read the sentence, “over the past five years more than 100 death row inmates have not only been removed form death row but freed from prison altogether due to DNA testing of evidence stored from the original crime scene…”, I just thought that everyone said that they were innocent if they were on death row. It’s becoming clear to me that a person’s punishment who is convicted of a crime is dependant on the fair trial. And a fair trail is dependant on the person’s ability to a good defense lawyer. And a good defense lawyer is dependant on if the accused person can afford to pay for a good lawyer. It all boils down on the social and economic standing of the accused. Unfortunately in our society today the majority of people who have wealth are white. Therefore they have the power and ability to afford a good defense even if they are caught commuting a crime and will less likely end up on death row.
September 25, 2006 at 6:49 am
Kimberly,
Thanks for the web site on lynching. I checked it out and found a lot of information. I too thought that lynching meant for someone to be hung. I wasn’t aware that it included racial crimes that whites performed on African Americans. When I have more time I would like to read more of the information on the web site you provided.
September 25, 2006 at 6:59 am
Jamie Danford
1395 humanities 6
9/24/06
Pg. 1
Lynching:
Statistics don’t hide, people the statistics. In any scenario where people try to prove a point they should search the subject, form an opinion, support it with their findings and then suggest some actions. I think that if everyone dug a little deeper in their research and looked at the whole spectrum then they would be able to form better opinions and make even better suggestions for the future actions. The problem is that many times when people do their research on the subject they already have an opinion about it creates a biased research pattern, in that they look for facts and statistics to support their idea instead of going into it with an open mind. I think that if the courts actually used this approach, an unbiased research tactic to begin with, people including judges would still find a way to prove their biased opinions or allow their personal morals to sway the verdicts, it’s in our human nature, it’s what makes us human, the feelings inside.
“Nearly 43% since 1976 have been defendants that were either black or Hispanic. Now, of all defendants sentenced to death since 1976 81% of the victims in their cases have been white.” (Ogletree and Sarat). This statistic means nothing to me without having other ones that relate to it. For example I might ask what was the percentage of immigration during these years in reference to these specific immigrant groups? Another good question might be is in what state if not the United States were these numbers found in? What courts? Who were the judges and attorneys? What are their backgrounds? Etc. There are so many factors that can add to the racist trend in our court system that it makes it hard to prove that any one factor is the reason the numbers are the way they are. “Mc Cleskey decision the supreme court held that statistics showing racial disparity in the imposition of the death penalty were insufficient to demonstrate discriminatory intent or unconstitutional discrimination in the 14th amendment context and insufficient to show irrationality arbitrariness and capriciousness under any kind of 8th amendment analysis (2).” (Ogletree and Sarat).
When looking at statistics people should ask the question or find out what the big picture is in order to form a strong case. For example the way a financial analyst dissects the financial statements of a company to suggest whether the bank should give the company the loan they applied for or not. In order to create a base for the decision the analyst suggestion is based on many ratios relating to other ratios. Although from what we have seen, heard, researched and learned in this class has to do with African Americans, Hispanics, and mostly the poor being the victims of a biased court system in the case of OJ Simpson it was not. The fact that he had money and because he had money he was able to afford a good attorney(s), being the reason he was not found guilty, it was the fact that the Plaintiff’s attorney did not do her homework when it came to discovery.
Jamie Danford
1395 humanities 6
9/24/06
Pg. 2
Mr. Rhoads my Business Law Professor at Long Beach State brought to our attention that the glove which apparently did not fit OJ’s hand once the plantiff’s attorney asked him to try it on for the jury to see when she should have had a deposition with a glove expert before asking the question in court to see if the glove did indeed fit. Instead with the glove being possibly all bloody and or stiff and crumpled when OJ was asked to try it on did not fit. The issue here is that the glove expert could have said that after looking at
OJ’s hand, the make of the glove, size of the glove etc, it is possible that at one time this glove could have fit OJ’s hand or at least she would have known that the glove did not fit and would not have had raised a red flag to the jury in the court. My point is not weather the glove fit but it is that an attorney should never ask a question they do not already know the answer to. The other point is that I think she was probably not a cheap attorney so it just goes to show that it is not always a money issue as a way to prove the case or not; it truly comes down to whether or not the attorneys do their homework.
The issue with lynching is that we know for a fact that back in the day when lynching was used as a method to kill and punish the black slaves that there was racism. We also know that during that time people with power (the whites) were not so concerned with with the idea of a humane death sentence. I think they thought it was not supposed to be humane because they did not see the blacks as humans, they saw them as slaves, work horses, subjects with a number tattoo only unlike the Jewish their numbers were counted by the amount of scars on their backs. With that being said because we have documented proof of the KKK’s (Klu Klux Klan) sole objective as a racist group from theirs acts and events that were documented with their intent, and purpose to racially discriminate with violence toward blacks, how are we to know that the documents of lynching were not altered, thrown out, or otherwise tampered with if even in exsistance anymore to prove innocence. My point here is that these statistics could be even more swayed in either direction to protect one race’s reputation and to destroy another’s. Statistics don’t hide, people hide the statistics. You will only ever find what people want you to find or what you look for, but they are hard to find if they are hidden and impossible to find if they are destroyed.
When we think of this part of our history as ¨best forgotten´, it is expressive of the collective amnesia, the epistemology of ignorance that must be continuously produced if capital punishment’s contemporary contribution to the racial polity is to be elided. (Ogletree and Sarat 42).
If attorneys were not so ignorant at times, whether it is on purpose or not, the number of
death row inmates would significantly decrease, whether that is a good thing or a bad
thing depends on the fact of whether the person being charged is actually innocent or
guilty. Knowledge is power, and an ignorant attorney is another attorneys’ dinner.
Jamie Danford
1395 humanities 6
9/24/06
Pg. 3
We are now back to the position of power and the people who control it and that power is represented by knowledge. Martin Luther King educated himself in order to educate others and motivate them to educate themselves because he understood that that was all the black man was missing. His knowledge gave him power. He also had an extremely effective way of campaigning and by doing so received credit for his legendary efforts valiantly.
The usual and more common punishment today is life is prison as the next highest extreme punishment. As the modern social environment changes so should the interpretation of the law along with the application of such laws. I think that his idea that his job is to help create a more humane death for those subject to capitol punishment. As Michele Foucault states, “The minute disciplines, the panopticisms of every day may well be below the level of emergence of the great apparatuses and the great political struggles.” (223).
Mr. Death:
Mr. Death or shall I say Dr. Death? In analyzing the relataionships between the films Mr.
Death and Dead Man walking, along with the book of Dead Man Walking, I found Fred
Leutcher, known as Mr. Death in the film, had some characteristics in common with Mr.
Sonnier, the executed deathrow inmate from Dead Man Walking. These common
characteristics include: abnormal definitions of humanity, lonliness and their inability to
foresee the consequences of their actions as applied to the social norms of behavior
governed by our laws. In Discipline and punish Michele Foucault talks about isolation,
punishment, and illegalities that I will use to explain the inevitable destinations of Fred Leuchter and Pat Sonnier.
In one scene of the film, Mr. Death, Fred when asked what his job was answered, “I kill people.” The person who claims this as their job title and is proud of it has some serious issues concerning the definition of what true humanity is. I believe that if he was truly a humanist he would have spent his time being concerned with the science in proving that the constitution’s language of cruel and unusual punishment should overturn capitol punishment because the modern day environment has changed since the days when stoning, lynching, hanging, or otherwise executing people is no longer the usual punishment because that is what a normal person would be more concerned with. “The juridical systems define juridical subjects according to universal norms…hierarchize individuals in relation to one another and if necessary, disqualify and invalidate.” (Foucault 223)Fred was never disqualified from his expertise because he was never qualified to begin with according to socially acceptable norms and proof of education, test scores etc. Sonnier is like Fred in this characteristic because to Sonnier it was normal to hunt and kill rabbits, chickens, or a neighbor’s cow because it was a way of survival. In a sense he was acting like an Indian. Indians would find him to be normal as Sister Helen did not. Since most people would think more like Sister Helen than an Indian Sonnier was considered to be inhumane and abnormal.
“Isolation provides an intimate exchange between the convict and the power that is exercised over him.” (Foucault 237). Sonnier and Fred were both very lonesome growing up. They filled the holes in their hearts with an act of hatred although they did not see it as that. Because most people do not grow up that lonely it would be impossible for others to see it from their point of view and interpret the explanation of the purposes in the same way. The power of their interpretation and opinions formed from their backgrounds provides a bridge to the intimate exchange and passion for what they have done, however not necessarily in Sonnier’s case of his most extreme criminal acts, more in reference to the minor acts of abnormality such as his methods for grocery shopping or shall I saw hunting.
Their inability to foresee the consequences of their actions as applied to the social norms of behavior governed by our laws as Foucault states, “ it would be hypocritical to believe that the law was made for all in the name of all.” (276). Once again it goes back to the ideology that their frames of reference and backgrounds are so different from everyone else’s that in such cases for instance the Americans relationship with the Indians have different laws with in their own bounderies and or territory also known as reservations. It just so happens that isolation happens to have been the best thing for Fred because all he did was destroy his carrier which he had so much passion for in the event of his contributions of proof or disproof to the Haulocost. As we all know for Sonnier his destination or territory no longer exists due to his inhumane criminal acts because he was killed/put to death/ I don’t even know how to put it. In both cases however both Fred and Sonnier were so wrapped up in the event they were engaged in at the time that they were blinded by the past of emptiness and loneliness that their need to fulfill that disabled their ability to foresee the consequences and how it might affect the rest of their lives.
September 25, 2006 at 7:05 am
David Bynum
American Cultures 1395
Online
9/23/06
Mr. Death
medic811@sbcglobal.net
September 25, 2006 at 7:05 am
Melissa Duffield
Mr. Death/ Lynching
1395
9/24/06 1
The film Mr. Death was an interesting documentary on the rise and fall of Fred A. Leuchter. Fred A. Leuchter was responsible for improving the way people are executed. Leuchter said that it is not hard what he does he simply finds the problem with the method of execution weather it be the electric chair, the gas chamber, hanging, or lethal injection and find a solution to the problem. He became involved in execution and the methods that are used because he used to go to work with his dad, who worked as a guard at the jail and Fred A. Leuchter felt that he needed to make the methods of execution more humane. Fred A. Leuchter became well know for the work he had done, helping Tennessee build a new electric chair and New Jersey build their machine. He became called upon by a man named Ernst Zundel who believed that there was no such thing as the Holocaust. Zundel wanted Fred A. Leuchter to go to Poland and do research and tests on an old gas chamber supposedly used in the Holocaust. Fred A. Leuchters results showed no evidence of cyanide, used to kill people in gas chambers. Fred A. Leuchter traveled around and made speeches about his finding soon to become very unpopular nationally. This film deals with two major issues however both of them have to do with killing. One major issue is the death penalty and how Fred A. Leuchter worked to make the execution methods more humane. The other
Melissa Duffield 2
Mr. Death/ Lynching
major issue is to do with the Holocaust and weather those six million people were really killed, or was it just a myth? Myth or no myth the work that Fred A. Leuchter did in Poland only raised doubts about Leuchter and the quality of his work which proved to be the end of his very promising career.
While watching the film Mr. Death I noticed that quite a bit of Foucault work applies to the film. One quote that Foucault said which I thought was interesting to compare to a small part in the movie was “One no longer touched the body, or at least as little as possible, and then only to reach something other than the body itself ” (11). Fred A. Leuchter was talking about in the film how he made the electric chair so all the guard had to do was push a button and the straps that would hold the person down would pop right off. He also added a pan to catch any fluids that might come from the human body. I think that these are nice features to have on the chair for the guards so they don’t have to touch the mess that is left behind from executing someone. However it does seem like Fred A. Leuchter was trying to add as much as possible so the guards and witness did not have to touch, see, or interact with the prisoner as much. It seems like the less human interaction we have with the inmate the more human the execution method is. Even though I feel mean and horrible saying this I thought of it and I think it might be something to mention. When Fred A. Leuchter was talking about lethal injection and instead of having the criminal strapped to a table and stare up at a blank white wall there should be a nice chair (like the one in the dentist office) that the criminal can sit on and watch a T.V. or look at a picture, make the
Melissa Duffield
Mr. Death/ Lynching 3
experience more pleasant. However like Foucault said “The criminal must not be glorified (112).” I understand that anyone knows that be killed is the ultimate punishment and we should try to make the experience pleasant for the criminal. However we want to make the experience as nasty as possible for the other citizens thinking about maybe committing a horrible crime. We want the citizen who is thinking about committing the crime to be able to feel lonely, cold, ashamed, sad, and scared and hopefully this will deter them from trying to commit any bad crimes. All in all I think that Fred A. Leuchter is a perfect example of Foucault’s famous and question raising quote “people know what they do, they frequently know why they do what they do, but what they don’t know is what they do does” Leuchter knew what he was doing, he felt a need to find an answer and share his results with the world however he did not know what a great effect it would have on him and that his work would be his demise.
I think that reading Lynch mobs to the killing state race and the Death Penalty in America by Charles J Ogletree jr. was hard because I found myself arguing with myself throughout the paper. I was and also shocked about the number of inmates on death row that are not white. Even though I do ( kind of) support the death penalty I know that there are many flaws with it as well as with are government and how the criminals are being tried. Minorities don’t usually have the same advantages and luxuries that majorities are given. Many of the people in jail have to resort to doing something illegal (selling drugs, prostituting)
Melissa Duffield
Mr. Death/ Lynching 4
to make money to be able to live. Many of the people in jail usually did not have a positive childhood and had no escape or opportunity to get away from there living situation. I am not saying that everyone in jail was in this situation or that if you are in this situation you will end up in jail. I know I had a rough childhood; however I worked hard and made good choices to turn my life around and make something of myself. I think that Lynch mobs to the killing state race and the Death Penalty in America deals with the issue that even Lt. Critterdon talked about. This issue is that when people do get out of jail they don’t have much money, usually no place to go, and no job. So how do they get started again? Not out of the goodness of someone else’s heart, they have to go back to doing what they were doing before they got put in jail (steeling, drug dealing, prostituting) just to make ends meat. This is a major issue that MUST be dealt with so we can start to see the number of people in jail decrease. Even though I said I am for the death penalty I don’t think I can honestly be 100% for it. There are so many aspects of it one of which is the government, which until those flaws get fixed the decrease of people in jail and on death row will not be changed.
September 25, 2006 at 7:10 am
Hi just re-posting becasue I forgot my e-mail in the header.
Sorry
Melissa Duffield
Meld731@yahoo.com
Mr. Death/ Lynching
1395
9/24/06 1
The film Mr. Death was an interesting documentary on the rise and fall of Fred A. Leuchter. Fred A. Leuchter was responsible for improving the way people are executed. Leuchter said that it is not hard what he does he simply finds the problem with the method of execution weather it be the electric chair, the gas chamber, hanging, or lethal injection and find a solution to the problem. He became involved in execution and the methods that are used because he used to go to work with his dad, who worked as a guard at the jail and Fred A. Leuchter felt that he needed to make the methods of execution more humane. Fred A. Leuchter became well know for the work he had done, helping Tennessee build a new electric chair and New Jersey build their machine. He became called upon by a man named Ernst Zundel who believed that there was no such thing as the Holocaust. Zundel wanted Fred A. Leuchter to go to Poland and do research and tests on an old gas chamber supposedly used in the Holocaust. Fred A. Leuchters results showed no evidence of cyanide, used to kill people in gas chambers. Fred A. Leuchter traveled around and made speeches about his finding soon to become very unpopular nationally. This film deals with two major issues however both of them have to do with killing. One major issue is the death penalty and how Fred A. Leuchter worked to make the execution methods more humane. The other
Melissa Duffield 2
Mr. Death/ Lynching
major issue is to do with the Holocaust and weather those six million people were really killed, or was it just a myth? Myth or no myth the work that Fred A. Leuchter did in Poland only raised doubts about Leuchter and the quality of his work which proved to be the end of his very promising career.
While watching the film Mr. Death I noticed that quite a bit of Foucault work applies to the film. One quote that Foucault said which I thought was interesting to compare to a small part in the movie was “One no longer touched the body, or at least as little as possible, and then only to reach something other than the body itself ” (11). Fred A. Leuchter was talking about in the film how he made the electric chair so all the guard had to do was push a button and the straps that would hold the person down would pop right off. He also added a pan to catch any fluids that might come from the human body. I think that these are nice features to have on the chair for the guards so they don’t have to touch the mess that is left behind from executing someone. However it does seem like Fred A. Leuchter was trying to add as much as possible so the guards and witness did not have to touch, see, or interact with the prisoner as much. It seems like the less human interaction we have with the inmate the more human the execution method is. Even though I feel mean and horrible saying this I thought of it and I think it might be something to mention. When Fred A. Leuchter was talking about lethal injection and instead of having the criminal strapped to a table and stare up at a blank white wall there should be a nice chair (like the one in the dentist office) that the criminal can sit on and watch a T.V. or look at a picture, make the
Melissa Duffield
Mr. Death/ Lynching 3
experience more pleasant. However like Foucault said “The criminal must not be glorified (112).” I understand that anyone knows that be killed is the ultimate punishment and we should try to make the experience pleasant for the criminal. However we want to make the experience as nasty as possible for the other citizens thinking about maybe committing a horrible crime. We want the citizen who is thinking about committing the crime to be able to feel lonely, cold, ashamed, sad, and scared and hopefully this will deter them from trying to commit any bad crimes. All in all I think that Fred A. Leuchter is a perfect example of Foucault’s famous and question raising quote “people know what they do, they frequently know why they do what they do, but what they don’t know is what they do does” Leuchter knew what he was doing, he felt a need to find an answer and share his results with the world however he did not know what a great effect it would have on him and that his work would be his demise.
I think that reading Lynch mobs to the killing state race and the Death Penalty in America by Charles J Ogletree jr. was hard because I found myself arguing with myself throughout the paper. I was and also shocked about the number of inmates on death row that are not white. Even though I do ( kind of) support the death penalty I know that there are many flaws with it as well as with are government and how the criminals are being tried. Minorities don’t usually have the same advantages and luxuries that majorities are given. Many of the people in jail have to resort to doing something illegal (selling drugs, prostituting)
Melissa Duffield
Mr. Death/ Lynching 4
to make money to be able to live. Many of the people in jail usually did not have a positive childhood and had no escape or opportunity to get away from there living situation. I am not saying that everyone in jail was in this situation or that if you are in this situation you will end up in jail. I know I had a rough childhood; however I worked hard and made good choices to turn my life around and make something of myself. I think that Lynch mobs to the killing state race and the Death Penalty in America deals with the issue that even Lt. Critterdon talked about. This issue is that when people do get out of jail they don’t have much money, usually no place to go, and no job. So how do they get started again? Not out of the goodness of someone else’s heart, they have to go back to doing what they were doing before they got put in jail (steeling, drug dealing, prostituting) just to make ends meat. This is a major issue that MUST be dealt with so we can start to see the number of people in jail decrease. Even though I said I am for the death penalty I don’t think I can honestly be 100% for it. There are so many aspects of it one of which is the government, which until those flaws get fixed the decrease of people in jail and on death row will not
September 25, 2006 at 7:10 am
1395 Film notes and quotes I based and formed opinions for in my paper but could not possibly explain all of them in my paper thus making it way long.
Mr. Death
Is electrocution humane?
“It is not easy to take a life humanly and painlessly without doing a great deal of damage to the body”
life support and execution systems are no different from one another both must work flawlessly in order to preserve or “very successfully execute the body. and brain dead vegetable Far worse than being executed.
Jesse Tafaro – head on fire
One specific example the inmates execution failed leaving him lying on the floor until the guards could redirect the source of power. 30 min. after his crying and suffering they successfully electrocuted him
In the event of the electrocution elephant I made my final decision that I am no longer on the fence about capitol punishment I am not for it. Not sure what the elephant did or did not do but it killed me inside to see the actual thing.
States equipment not functional, thus reason being of so many not so successful executions by electrocution.
Built by inmates and electricians both of which have no idea the science involved of electrocuting the human body in a humane manner.
Fred. Nut job refers to his job as he “Kills people”
NJ – leathal injection
Difficult if not impossible problem even for medically trained personal
Need a machine
Idea:
Push pull relationship so that the execute can take the chem. At a
rate of acceptance with the vascular system of the particular body.
NJ – deputy commisioner
Bored in meeting until
“Fred designed the helmet used with the electric chair in NC”
You designed the helmet the one that they just used
“What leathal inj. Has to do with an electic chair is beyond me”
“Lay on a gerny for 35 min. looking at the ceiling in a concrete rm.” not humane
Electricution, leathal inj., gallos, gas – competence
Not morally imposed on working on an execution device
Proponent of cp but not prop. Of Capital torture.
“We must always remember and never forget that the people that are being executed are human beings.”
Defective equipment,
Drip pad, instant release belts.
Gas – major danger of leakage
“ would much rather be electrocuted” but not Alabama or Florida, Virginia. Mr. Taffaro
“ I sleep with the comforting thought that with my equipment the persons being executed has a better chance of having a painless more humane and dignified execution.”
Married the waitress.
Expert Fred American unbiased – no experience of looking at ruined buildings only exp. Making desgn mod. For execution methods and equipment
– german writer published a pamphlet – Did six mil really die – the holocaust is a myth, illeagal on the basis of publishing something knowing the statements were false. Zundel on trial
With the help of translators and a cinimetographer- he researched the ruins in the barrocks of the so called myth.
“Any man no matter what he has done has a right to a fair trial” fred
Poland oschawitz – special location vs gas chamber – code lang. Slip – in corr, ”Vergasunskeller”
What was it –
Why didn’t they just shoot them? I would have been cheaper.
No sionide found James Roth, chemist “ the test was not the right one for the samle”
Suface reaction only
by crushing to get a sub sample dilutes by ten – 100 thousands times. No reason to go deep. Not knowing
“if they go in with blinders on they will see what they want to see.”
What was he trying to prove”
by not knowing where the samples came from or what samples were which there was no way to determine matter of facts.
The man is an anti semi
“hate mongers” Fred
Shelley Shapiro “cause of spreading hatred”
Holocaust activist
Soft or inadequet credentials
Suzanne Tabasky
activist
What kind of man is he?
why did he do it?”
What kind of reflection is this on our community?
Under a spell
Truly believed what he was doing was right.
Freedom of speech as an American he has that right ( trial was an issue of freedom of speech) testified in Canada.
Expert??????Fred
a way to be notice, loved
chose not to consider the evidence of his own foolishness. Denial that he hadn’t correctly scientifically performed the taking of samples from the ruins.
By deliverance of false or incomplete information people lose trust.
I hope I have lived up to your expectations. Speech
Less than 10% of the eng. In Mass. Had liscences
Did marks have a diploma in markism?
Biased opinions regarding his testifying in Canada
Resulted in the loss of contract work, divorce, etc.
Leuchter
Maybe some others can find some use of them or atleast help them understand where I was coming from when I wrote my paper.
September 25, 2006 at 7:32 am
David Bynum
American Cultures 1395
Online
9/23/06
Mr. Death
medic811@sbcglobal.net
Last year I had an opportunity to visit Dachau, Germany’s first concentration camp. It was an experience I will never forget. The evil there is ineffable. Chills run up your spine and hairs stand on end. First you drive through a quaint German town, across beautiful landscaping, over a serene creek. Then you arrive at the gates of Dachau. The journals from the prisoners and guards left you speechless. Imagining that thousands of people were crammed in this little space was unthinkable. I glanced over at the trees but my mind flashed back to a photo of thousands of dead bodies buried there. All of this happened a mere 60 years ago in our ‘civilized’ lifetime (just sharing my experience).
Mr. Death was a disturbing movie. It explored the life of Fred A. Lechter Jr. who was a specialist that worked to make capital punishment more humane. The movie starts with Leuchter exploring his childhood at the prisons. He eventually has relationships with the prisoners and guards. At this point he decides to take the humanitarian approach and devotes his life to making capital punishment more humane. In Mr. Death and Dead Man Walking, having a relationship with the condemned would be difficult. I can see why Leuchter and Sister Helen would want the execution to be as humane as possible.
Leuchter had ideas of improving the death chamber by placing pleasant pictures (like at a dentist’s office) in the room so it didn’t seem so cold and sterile. He also improves the electric chair by making removable straps instead of “peeling the burned flesh off.” An interesting comment he made was his analogy of life support and execution. Leuchter stated that both need to be done flawlessly and if it wasn’t, the inmate would live. Live? In Dead Man Walking, Sister Helen also spoke of an inmate who lived and then was later executed. Eventually his experience with gas chambers led him to the next phase and downfall of his career.
Leuchter was hired by Holocaust denier, Zundel, to prove that the Holocaust , as we know it, did not exist. When the word Holocaust is mentioned, one tends to think of “6 millions Jews died via the gas chamber during this time.” According to Foucault’s quote about “truth, even if it is wrong cannot be refuted because it was hardened into an unalterable form in the long baking process of history.” This is how discourses are framed and what we end up believing without looking at the facts.
Leuchter tried to prove that it would have been difficult and not probable to kill 6 million people via the gas chamber. The gas chamber at Dachau was not used to kill people; It was used to kill vermin. Most of the people died from natural attrition, disease, abuse, experiements, torture, death marches and firing squads. Another discursive is that only Jews were killed. When Dachau was liberated in 1945, 67,000 people was rescued; only 22,000 of those 67,000 were Jews.
The Holocaust was about dividing practicies and bio-power. It was about eliminating an entire race of people. Our prison system is also about bio-power, it is separating people into groups and the prisoners being an undesirable one.
Foucault wanted to invoke thought in all of us; he wanted our thoughts to be free. Leuchter believed that this right was taken from him. Towards the end of the movie he felt his right for freedom of speech and thought were taken away. Leuchter had a point. He was only looking at one part of history but his part was valid. In Dead Man Walking, Sister Helen wanted us to look at her views as well (all human life is valuable). Knowledge is controlled by different organizations (ie the media, forged truths, government, facts, church etc…), and Leuchter’s experience teaches to look at all the facts before coming to a conclusion.
September 25, 2006 at 7:57 am
Jamie – I thought your film notes were hysterical! Thanks for the laugh. I forgot about the poor elephant!
September 25, 2006 at 3:24 pm
David Bynum
American Cultures 1395
Online
9/24/06
medic811@sbcglobal.net
Lynching
When I first read the title “From Lynch mobs to the Killing State,” by authors Ogletree and Sarat, my first thoughts were “do they mean lynching as in hanging from the trees? Yes, in a metaphoric sense but lynching (death penalty) “has been a tool that has been used throughout history to opress racial minorities especially african Americans “(3). This book is about racisim and captial punishment.
The beginning of Dead Man Walking informs us of statistics involving the projects and poor communities. These communities are diverse and “the death penalty in the US has always been most rigorously applied in Southern states” (DMW 3) where the population is mostly black.
In reference to the “racial contract,” there is no doubt that in the “private sphere (segregated housing), theoretical discourses (biogenics?), pernicious stereotypes (black male crime) racisim plays a factor. Self referential power (bio-power) because the black community is named. In addition, another form of bio-power exists because they are also segregated (ie housing).
It isn’t uncommon for a black male driving a nice car to be pulled over because it is assumed the car is stolen. The author is concerned and would like to see “the gradual elimination of race-specific penalites as well as methods of inflecting them which at least formally moves the law closer to the liberal ideal of equality under the law”
Dead Man Walking and Dying to tell show us the law isn’t fair. 4 people were convicted of the same crimes, two were sentenced to life in prison and 2 the death penalty. Moreover, according to Ogletree states “of all defendants sentenced to death since 1976 81% of the victims in their cases have been white.” Whereas, “blacks are most likely to be convicted for killing other blacks and the murders of black victims are the least likely to receive the death sentence…”(9). The law is clearly unequal.
Our system surrounding capital punishment is clearly flawed. It is removed from public site to avoid conflict. The public lynchings are no longer visible, however, captial punishment still exists. Olgetree believes that capital punishment is influenced by race, social status and a “racial contract.” Sister Helen believed that capital punishment did not deter crime. The Holocaust was also about hate and racisim. I can’t help but tie everything (Dead Man Walking, Dying to Tell, Mr. Death and Lynching) back to Foucault and his archaeology of knowledge. We are all influenced by race, power (political and religious). Knowledge is powerful, not ignorance.
September 25, 2006 at 7:03 pm
Dave – I am glad you enjoyed my notes, sp not the greatest when taking notes during the movie and I did not go back to get the names of all the people I quoted bc I simply could not bring myself to watch it over and over. I strongly agree with you that Fred did have a niche for approaching theories scientifically which I admire. We must remember that Fred is human too and that’s what humans do they make mistakes.
September 25, 2006 at 7:26 pm
Corrine – My point exsaclty regarding your comment on the OJ case. I just now am reading your paper and find it ironic that we both refernced the same case. I think there is something to be said there in the way attorneys have earned a bad reputation and it’s because of cases like OJ’s that make it obvious for the public to make such alegations that about attorneys. Attorneys themselves not only dig their own ditches but the ditches of those they represent as well.
September 25, 2006 at 8:44 pm
Hi Kimberely:
I liked your response and some of your conclusions were the same as mine in regards to Mr. Death.
I too do not agree with Capital Punishment. Even though Fred was a proponent of Capital Punishment, I do believe he was working towards making it more humaine. If he hadn’t stepped up, I wonder if anyone would?
Also, I did not understand that Zundel hired Leuchter. I thought he was hired by the court system, and it was really never made clear that he was paid- although that is what I assumed.
September 25, 2006 at 8:52 pm
Hi Jamie:
That is interesting. I found the case interesting because so many of us were talking about the racial biast. The OJ case is one that leans the opposite directions in the trends that are being cited. OJ was black, and Nicole was white – yet he walked. No doubtedly in my mind did he murder Nicole, but it was $$ that bought him off. So while he was black, he was not poor.
September 26, 2006 at 12:04 am
Anna Johnson
September 24, 2006
Human 6 Section 1395 ONLINE
Mr. Death
Mr. Death is the story of the very interesting Fred A. Leuchter, a manufacturer of execution equipment who also became involved in the case of trying to prove there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz, which later ruins his career. Leuchter narrates the story of his life long involvement and interest in creating equipment that executes more humanely. His main concern is to prevent “death by torture”. I watched this movie with no prior knowledge of what it was about or who he was. Leuchter’s strange personality and occupations set the eerie mood of the movie. Leuchter had good intentions for everything he did yet he went into situations with a blind eye and soon these actions caused his career to plunge.
Leuchter’s main concern essentially was to help those on death row by allowing a painless more effective death system. “I became involved in the manufacture of execution equipment because I was concerned with the deplorable condition of the hardware that’s in most of the states’ prisons, which generally results in torture prior to death. A number of years ago I was asked by a state to look at their electric chair. I was surprised at the condition of the equipment and I indicated to them what changes should be made to bring the equipment up to the point of doing a humane execution.” I applaud him for taking on this task that many, including myself, have never thought of being an issue. I agree that the execution process should not result in torture because these people at still human beings, regardless of their crimes. Foucault examined this same thing in his writings, “Impose penalties free of pain.” (11) Foucault discusses, “There remains a trace of ‘torture’ in the modern mechanisms of criminal justice- a trace that has not been entirely overcome…” (16) Foucault did not agree with the penal system and knowing that punishment had left the public eye raised concern for the humanity of the executions. The public no longer saw the punishment which was related directly to the crime, “justice no longer takes public responsibility for the violence that is bound up with its practice…”
Leuchter developed machines that were to work “flawlessly” and not break during the process of execution. He mentioned some of the same instances that Sister Prejean did in Dead Man Walking. She spoke of the horrible torture the electric chair brought to some inmates in past history. The chairs were faulty and there were cases of blowing a fuse during executions, leaving men as vegetables and having to wait until the problem was fixed, in effect being tortured to death. Sister Prejean speaks of a case in 1890, “The current had been passing through his body for 15 seconds when the electrode at the head was removed…The man was still alive.” (18) The thought of someone, anyone, having to go through this torment is unbearable. Perhaps I feel this way because I have never known a victim of death row or never had someone close to be brutally murdered by another. Leuchter wanted to make sure the executioners knew what they were doing and knew the force it takes to kill a human. “The human body is not easy to destroy and it’s not east to take a life humanely and painlessly without doing a great deal of damage to the individual’s body,” said Leuchter.
I believe that Leuchter was on the path to accomplishing his goal for the execution process. He grew up working with his father around a prison so he understood
Anna Johnson
Human 6 Section 1395
Mr. Death
that the inmates were people just like he was, just like their victims. He was asked to build a lethal injection machine that could operate alone, without human hand. He fulfilled this need however had concerns for this process as well. The inmate must be strapped down and immobile during the procedure or else they could damage themselves from the catheter. He believed that they should be allowed comfort during the time of waiting. They should be allowed to sit in a chair like at the dentist, given TV to watch, or pictures to look at rather that a plain cement room. “They should afford their greatest dignity because they are about to loose their life,” Leuchter explained. “We must always remember and we must never forget the fact that the person being executed is a human being.” I agree with Leuchter that this would be a humane thing to do but it is hard to justify once you learn the horrible crimes and torture they put their victim through as well. I could really see that he cared for the people going through capital punishment and that made it even harder to see his rejection later in the movie.
Creating a system of humane execution was the number one ambition for Leuchter and I respect that regardless of his later involvement in confirming the hoax of Auschwitz. He had a job to think about the inmates on death row and most others would not put so much thought in for people like them. I really did appreciate what he was trying to do at the beginning of the movie. It was interesting to see the life and personality of someone who makes execution equipment. As I learned about his activity with the gas chambers I felt sorry for him. He saw the opportunity as a big break for his career but was lead into it by the wrong people. He went into it without thinking of the consequences and the huge majority going against him. I certainly cannot agree with his findings in Auschwitz. I learned a lot from this documentary and it changed my view on how executions take place. I didn’t know much about how they occur but it is much more in depth and complex that I would have imagined. I feel like Fred Leuchter is a good man who cares for fellow humans but at the same time is a bit naive to his situation. I now have to question my beliefs, not if capital punishment should take place, rather if capital punishment is being done in a humane way. Leuchter opened my eyes and changed my view to an issue I was never concerned about. Capital punishment has just become that much more difficult of a discussion.
September 26, 2006 at 10:07 am
Jamie-
Thank you for saying something about the elephant! I couldn’t even watch that part of the movie because I was so disgusted. This is something I’ve noticed about me – I’m more disgusted and offended when innocent animals are tortured and killed than I am when someone on Death Row is justly executed. Animals are not human – they are not able to speak out against the pain they are put through for the “betterment” of humans. Animals tested in laboratories to make better cosmetics cannot say where it hurts just as animals who are tortured and/or killed by people for no other reason than entertainment value cannot say anything. I can’t say that the elephant electrocution changed my mind about the death penalty but I was outraged all the same.
September 26, 2006 at 8:56 pm
Ben Basque- You always seem to have a good paper so maybe i should send you money to write mine, but keep it on the DL, lol. Well You made some good points. When it comes to Racism and how people of color have a disadvantage in money and education. I find that to be sooooo true, it reminds me of a time in class where the teacher asked if the educational or other opportunities were the same bewteen Santa Rosa and Compton. I of course said no, but all these rich white kids said yes they do, they could do all of the same stuff. People are so ignorant to the fact that kids in ther projects or poor schools have none of the opportunites we have. Their life is based on finding food, making rent, and not getting shot on the way to school. Now come on with all that in your life would you rather make lots of money selling drugs OR have some part time job earning 6 something an hour working 40 hours a week. Choices Choices.
Then you brought up the point of self-worth. I have lived in poor neighborhoods before i came to petaluma and kids always say “why should I try at school or other things where i am never going to make it?” It is that mind set placed into these kids that causes criminals, the government helps cause these situations with their poor management of OUR tax dollars on bombs rather than education. I could write about this stuff for days because it totally pisses me off, but Ben good points to bring up.
September 26, 2006 at 11:37 pm
It is always heart breaking to see animals die, whether in movies or in real life. It hurts even if you know they aren’t really being injured and it’s just for the movie. What about when a dog or mountain lion needs to be put to sleep because they attacked another animal or human? For the most part, it is the same as if a human killed someone. The animals are put to death when they commit an awful ‘crime’. Why are we more sympathetic to animals in that situation than humans? Maybe animals don’t know any better and humans do? Maybe it is the animal’s instincts of the wild and we took that from them.
I think any human who can actually complete a horrible enough act to put them on death row must have some mental instability, something isn’t right. I would like to think that no sane person would be able to kill another. Don’t these people need help as much as the next? Why don’t we sympathize more for those whom are so screwed up, they end up on death row? I usually feel sympathy for someone whose brain doesn’t function ‘normally’; it is harder for them in life. I don’t feel the same way about death row inmates, perhaps because their mental instability led to violence. I think it would be interesting to examine the way we naturally react to certain deaths. A human and an animal are put to death for the some reason. How come the same act can be committed, one by human and the other by an animal, and the same consequences take place, yet we feel more compassionate for the animal? This is a whole different issue than animal torture, as seen in Mr. Death or what occurs in cosmetic testing, laboratories, etc. I do feel those are wrong and our feeling are justified. There might be a very simple answer for all these questions and I have my own thoughts on what the answers may be but I still wonder what makes us respond so differently when animals vs. humans are put to death for committing an offense. This is just another way of looking at death.
September 27, 2006 at 12:10 am
It was stated in someone’s write up how Leuchter was not educated in his profession. I am curious to know how he was able to perform any of his duties without having some type of education behind it. So he basically just figured things out on his own? That’s scary for the people who actually went through with an execution that he may have worked on. What if something went wrong? I thought he didn’t want people to be tortured.
September 27, 2006 at 12:15 am
I agree with Corinne on the quote by Leuchter about execution being the same as a life support system. I always thought of one being able to keep someone alive and the other as taking away your ability to live.
September 27, 2006 at 5:34 pm
This website has some witness testimony on Leuchter’s qualifications for the case. It’s interesting to read what other people have to say about him and how he defends himself. I am sure there are a bunch of other sites that discuss his qualifications.
http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/l/leuchter-fred/
September 28, 2006 at 1:12 am
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Crystal Pardo
September 26, 2006
Response to Mr. Death – Week 5
Pardofam4@sbcglobal.net
American Cultures 1395
In watching the movie Mr. Death, my first impression of Fred A. Leuchter was that he was a very well educated man, but further along in the movie I discovered how he was not really educated in his profession at all. Leuchter came off as a scary individual. It was quite obvious that he enjoyed his profession a little too much. Seeing his smile throughout the movie made me a little scared and I thought for a minute that he looked like a serial killer. In a way he was a killer. He told the lady in the coffee shop that what he did for a living was kill people. Although he did explain in detail more about his profession I found it interesting that he would use that term to a stranger.
Leuchter was influenced by the correctional system at a young age because his father worked for a prison. As he began going to work with his father and becoming more familiar with prisons, Leuchter developed his passion as an execution specialist.
Prisons began to call upon Leuchter to examine their forms of executions to ensure that they were capable of carrying out their functions properly. The state of Tennessee asked Leuchter to reconstruct their electric chair which had been being used since 1898 so that it could be more efficient and up to date. Leuchter had to make many changes to the chair by its size, color, voltage and head piece.
I found it strange that Leuchter had the electric chair delivered to his home where in the basement he did most of his work. You would think that in his line of profession that he would perform his duties somewhere else. If I was living next to him I would think he was a little odd, but he seemed very proud with all the photographs of the electric chair at his home and the head piece on a plastic head. He even had a photograph of himself strapped into the chair. I found that very disturbing. In some of the photographs there were reflections in the chair that Leuchter states were some type of aura. I believe in spirits and I would not be surprised if these images were of people that had been put to death by that electric chair. Or maybe these spirits are coming to haunt him because of his profession.
Other states also asked Leuchter to examine their forms of execution such as lethal injection and the gas chamber. He did not specialize in these forms of execution, but because of his knowledge he took on the other tasks. Leuchter assumed that people believed if he could do his work for one type execution then he would be able to work on others as well.
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Response to Mr. Death – Week 5
Leuchter’s passion for his career was because he was for capital punishment, but against capital torture. He made it clear that a person being put to death was still a human being. I agree with this statement, but how is quickly putting a person to death by high voltages of electricity or by a toxic substance not a form of torture? I think if Leuchter was sincerely against capital torture then he would also be against capital punishment.
The part in the movie where the elephant was electrocuted was very sad to watch. I know that things need to be tested before actually being used, but to see it happen made me think of the actual human beings that suffered the very same way by electrocution. I understand the concept of execution is to be punished by taking your own life for the crime or crimes that you have committed, but in reality it does not make anything better or take back what the criminal did. The more I watched this movie I began to think to myself that the Death Penalty is inhumane and that people are uneducated on its facts. I know I am and just by watching this movie I see execution a lot differently now. There for I know think I am against the Death Penalty rather than for it.
Leuchter’s passion for his career caused him to have an unsuccessful marriage and career. He spent his honeymoon doing research at an Auschwitz Concentration Camp on gas chambers while his wife sat in their car. If this was my husband I would have ended the marriage right then. Eventually his wife did leave him, but Leuchter was so involved in his career that I don’t think he realized it until his career was over. In conclusion of his research, Leuchter believed that the gas chamber was not actually used during the Holocaust which is the opposite of what history has told us today. A historian in the movie stated that there were facts to prove Leuchter wrong and that he had never attempted to research the documents that contained this information but even if he had then it would probably not have helped him because the documents were in German.
When I think back to the film Dead Man Walking and how it relates to this movie, I think of how Pat Sonier was put to death for his crime by lethal injection and I wonder what was going through his mind when it was happening. A person like Leuchter made this possible for so many other people. I wonder if Leuchter ever thought about the people that were executed and what they would go through in the process. Knowing you are going to die on a certain date and by the electric chair or lethal injection could almost be as cruel as being killed unexpectedly.
An example of Foucault’s work that applies to this film is how he was a proponent of suicide. He believed suicide was a great personal victory. Could it be that Leuchter enjoyed making it possible for humans to die in a less painful way because he was curious how it would feel himself? Two more example of Foucault’s work was that he believed there was no higher purpose than being your own unique person and the extreme passion that he had for his work. Leuchter was obviously unique in his own way. He believed in himself and other peoples opinions did not get in the way of his passion. This was obvious when it came to trying to prove history to be incorrect and in losing his wife.
September 28, 2006 at 4:15 am
Corrine –
Yes, a high dollar attorney was able to get OJ off. I find it interesting, but not a coincidence, that his attorney was smart enough not to ask for a deposition concerning the fit of the glove and call an expert in to examine it and the hand of the alleged (OJ) murderer. Good attorneys do not ask questions they don’t know the answer to and this could have very well proven him guilty. My question is that why the plaintiffs attny Marsha did not ask for the deposition of an expert? Was it for the same reason that possibly only it would proove that it didn’t fit? My logic is that if I were marsha I would rather call for the depo instead of risking such evidence in front of the jurors for the first time. SO in conlcusion with OJ’s high dollar attorney, and as his right he should be paid good money, if I were his attorney which I wouldn’t be but if I were Oj would have had to pay me out the a$$ to defend such a case, in addition to the lack of discovery homework by Marsha, the plaintiffs attorney represents the product of a poor mans trial even with race factor, which I think OJ’s attorney used to their advantage, determined a verdict in that of the defense of OJ.
Donna –
In regards to the elephant even if it were a person for some reason if I had to see it even on tv and knew that it was real it would still give me the chills and disgust me. Maybe it’s the human in me, but from my experience I tend to put myself in other peoples shoes when actual events occur in real life so that I can reflect on how it would make me feel. It’s just the way I was taught “do onto others as you would like have done onto you.” Moms famous words. In other words Sonnier did not electrocute someone he did way worse, but “two wrongs don’t make a right.” Moms other famouse words. I honestly can not say that I would want to be executed if I had killed someone because I think I would rather die if I did such an act. But like many other cases I believe I would kill myself as well. As for the animals I have owned several horses in my life time and managed a dude ranch in Marin so maybe it was the large animal thing that got to me and my knowledge of the fact that we really don’t know the intent of some actions of animals. I do know that when some animals become violently dangerous and kill people for no apparent reason they are obviously mentally demented compared to the norm, or they could have a disease that causes them to siezure and alike harming those around them, or they could have been beaten in past events or are in pain that cause them to react violently when put in the same situation, what ever the reason when they become so dangerous I do agree that putting them down is the best and safest thing for both parties, but not by electrocution. There are more human ways to go.
September 28, 2006 at 4:33 am
After reading my response to Donnas comment it dawned on me that I find it ironic that the majority find it humane to put down an animal that is sick, demented or otherwise psycho, but it is not considered humane to do so with humans. Just a thought of irony.
September 28, 2006 at 6:25 pm
Jamie- Yeah people don’t treat animals like they should and i think animal abusers should spend more time in jail. People forget that without the animals we have we wouldn’t be able to live. People abuse people and animals, but animals can’t file a claim in court or tell the police, they just sit and be sad and filled with pain. Yeah so the electrocution of that poor Elephant was terrible and totally un needed.
October 1, 2006 at 9:10 pm
Jerome,
I agree with what you said about a child growing up with death and violence will be more accepting of it as an adult. Very sad thought that any child should live under those conditions.
Ben,
I agree with your statement about a large number of death row inmates being incarcarated based on economic bracket. Unfortunately legal expertize has to be bought. There is no way that a person that can’t afford cost of day to day life can afford the fees of a lawyer.