The penalty is death : U.S. newspaper coverage of women's executions / Marlin Shipman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Shipman, Marlin.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Capital punishment--United States--History.

Capital punishment.

Executions and executioners--Press coverage--United States--History.

Executions and executioners.

Women prisoners--United States--History.

Women prisoners.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (350 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Columbia, Mo. : University of Missouri Press, c2002.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In 1872 Susan Eberhart was convicted of murder for helping her lover to kill his wife. The Atlanta Constitution ran a story about her hanging in Georgia that covered slightly more than four full columns of text. In an editorial sermon about her, the Constitution said that Miss Eberhart not only committed murder, but also committed adultery and "violated the sanctity of marriage." An 1890 article in the Elko Independent said of Elizabeth Potts, who was hanged for murder, "To her we look for everything that is gentle and kind and tender; and we can scarcely conceive her capable of committing the highest crime known to the law." Indeed, at the time, this attitude was also applied to women in general. By 1998 the press's and society's attitudes had changed dramatically. A columnist from Texas wrote that convicted murderess Karla Faye Tucker should not be spared just because she was a woman. The author went on to say that women could be just as violent and aggressive as men; the idea that women are defenseless and need men's protection "is probably the last vestige of institutionalized sexism that needs to be rubbed out."

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part I. Murdered Family Members and Other Schemes

Chapter 1. Viragos and Unnatural Mothers

Nineteenth-Century Mothers

Chapter 2. The Demons Decline

Twentieth-Century Mothers

Chapter 3. Husbands and Other Family Members

Chapter 4. Other Schemes

Part II. Jazz Journalism and the Execution Story As Drama

Chapter 5. Excesses in 1920s Louisiana

Chapter 6. Female Mass Murderers in the Late 1930s

Chapter 7. Execution Stories As Serial Dramas

Part III. Race, Ethnicity, and Sexual Preference

Chapter 8. Pre-Civil War Press and Slave Executions

Chapter 9. Twentieth-Century Black Defendants

Chapter 10. The Irish

More Animal Than Human?

Chapter 11. Sexual Preference

Changes during the Past Fifty Years

Part IV. Hollywood, Female "Tough Guys," and Love Triangles

Chapter 12. Southern California Defendants

Chapter 13. The Female "Tough Guy"

Chapter 14. Little Attention for "First" Executions

Chapter 15. Love Triangles

Chapter 16. Little Support for Changes to

Execution Laws

Chapter 17. Government Secrecy of Executions

under Federal Authority

Part V. The Late 1990s and Beyond

Chapter 18. The High-Tech Media at the End of the

Twentieth Century

Epilogue

Works Cited

Index.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. 311-317) and index.

ISBN:

0-8262-6305-4

OCLC:

70744428