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1 Ohio St. J. Crim. L. 585 (2003-2004)
Fear Factor: The Role of Media in Covering and Shaping the Death Penalty

handle is hein.journals/osjcl1 and id is 593 raw text is: Fear Factor: The Role of Media in Covering and Shaping the Death Penalty Susan Bandes* I. INTRODUCTION Now that there is a book of academic writing available about the Simpsons (The D'oh of Homer'), perhaps a reference to a scene from that show might have the proper academic cachet. When Sideshow Bob is caught redhanded attempting to kill his brother, Police Chief Wiggams wheels the gumey up to Bob and prepares to strap him in. Bob asks, Isn't it customary to have a trial first? and Wiggams replies, Oh, a wise guy, eh? As we read media accounts of the jurisdictional jockeying over who would get to impose a death sentence on accused D.C. area snipers John Mohammad and Lee Malvo before they were brought to trial, or about the Illinois clemency hearings in which the cries for execution drowned out discussion of serious flaws with the administration of the death penalty, we might ask whether Chief Wiggams' attitude toward procedural protections is confined to the cartoons. Substantial work has been done on media's coverage of crime, in particular its insistent focus on violent crime. Very little work has been done specifically on media's relationship to the death penalty. Although much of what has been said about media and crime is highly relevant to this topic, the death penalty presents its own complex set of challenges for the media, and these are the focus of this piece. Law and media exist in a complex feedback loop. Television, with some help from other media, has become our culture's principal storyteller, educator, and shaper of the popular imagination.2 It not only transmits legal norms, but also has a role in creating them. We are constantly constructing and interpreting our notions of law and justice based on what we know, or what we think we know. Relatively few people have direct experience with the criminal justice system, and so much of what we know, or think we know, comes from media coverage. We should focus on media's limitations, their potential, and their particular grammar and logic, because these have important implications for our ability to articulate, construct, and even deliver justice. What is meant by media? The word is plural, and in one regard, it is important to treat it as such-focusing on the particular characteristics of each individual medium. Television, the omnipresent medium, has a particular Distinguished Research Professor of Law, DePaul University. I wish to thank Bill Bowers, Jim Liebman, Andrea Lyon and Michelle Oberman for their comments on an earlier draft. 1 THE SIMPSONS AND PHILOSOPHY: THE D'OH! OF HOMER (William Irwin et al. eds., 2001). 2 Susan Bandes & Jack Beermann, Lawyering Up, 2 GREEN BAG 2D 5, 6 (1998). 585

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