| The author, over the past fifteen years has been given unlimited access to the execution process in the State of Utah. Such access has included participation in execution planning meetings, ongoing interviews with death row inmates, access to the deathwatch experience and the witnessing of five executions--four by lethal injection and one by firing squad. This paper focuses on the process of execution as orchestration. Goffman's "staging" and metaphor of dramaturge has been helpful in many aspects of social life. This paper uses the concept of "orchestration" to suggest the execution process is better understood as an orchestrated activity in that various groups are performing separate activities and "rehearsals" that eventually come together as a part of a whole in the final "performance." This approach is not to suggest any aspects of "entertainment" or "recreation". Rather the complicated process of executions is presented as an involved, coordinated effort by those required to act in the name of the State. |
Updated 05/20/2006