Abstract
The story of the death penalty in North Carolina, like that of the nation generally, is a tragic one, filled with pain, rage, and fear. These elements bubble throughout Seth Kotch’s first book, Lethal State, and leave the reader more sensitive to the complicated historical, legal, and political structures supporting capital punishment today. More deliberately, the narrative highlights the importance of race and class when it comes to who gets the ultimate punishment and why. A more conservative reader might note that many if not most of those executed were guilty and that retribution is a legitimate goal of punishment. But Lethal State makes clear that the history of capital punishment is inextricably linked with the history of race in America and adds to a growing body of work that reveals how, in many ways, the modern criminal justice system is “the new Jim Crow.”
The evidence Kotch provides in weaving this narrative is both wide-ranging and meticulous. The seamless use of newspapers, governors’ papers, political and charitable reports, academic research, and capital punishment databases is one of the strengths of the text. In the end, one cannot escape the number of executions, the words of those administering it, or the images of those being executed, some innocently, in the name of racial social control. When combined with evidence of false convictions and the questionable humanity of various execution methods, it leads Kotch to rightly question whether the death penalty is a “history of failure”—and answer in the affirmative.
The text is organized in overlapping but chronological chapters, from the state’s first recorded education in 1726 to the modern era, in which old age is the most common method of execution for the state’s death row inmates. The introduction provides a quick overview of the death penalty, and its “deeply rooted” history in racial slavery, from colonial times to the Civil War. This relationship is explored more fully in Chapter 1, which covers the Reconstruction era into the first half of the 20th century. Those with some prior knowledge of racial bias and the death penalty today may find this to be the most interesting chapter, as it takes a detailed look at how and why lynchings and state executions reinforced one another. Kotch argues that these two forms of punishment—both of which took place in the form of hanging—worked together to maintain White supremacy. Indeed, it is hard to argue with the state’s governor (“The courts in the land are all in control of the whites, so there is never an excuse for lynching”) and White citizens (“Will you promise us if we don’t kill him that he will be convicted and hanged?”) when they say so themselves.
Chapter 2 argues that spectacle and shifting cultural values during the Progressive era drove changes in the death penalty. Kotch outlines how, in addition to moving it indoors and limiting who could view the execution, North Carolina switched first to electrocution and then to lethal gas. These attempts at creating a more dignified death, whether achieved or not, reveal the difficult nature of administering the death penalty. This is further complicated by the fact that race continued to be central to the issue, as revealed by the “notoriously overwritten” and racist media coverage, and the whitening of witnesses to executions, even as the number of executed persons remained disproportionately Black.
Roughly the same time period is covered in Chapter 3 but from the perspective of clemency, whether granted by the governor or juries. Kotch suggests this was due to the harsh mandatory capital sentences in place (e.g., burglary was a capital offense until 1941) and the courts’ general refusal to rehear cases in light of new evidence. This experiment in “nonexecution” is further explored in Chapter 4, which outlines the public criticisms of anti-death penalty activists such as Henry Canfield, Nell Battle Lewis, and Paul Green.
At the same time, White juries continued to sentence Black citizens to death, and polls showed that a clear majority of the public supported the death penalty for murder. This hints at the backlash to come, which is the subject of Chapter 5. Indeed, when the Supreme Court declared capital punishment as enacted unconstitutional in 1972, the state acted swiftly and surely to reform and reinstate it. In turn, executions resumed, though with somewhat diminished vigor. Despite more reforms, including the move to lethal injection and state laws that made it more likely to overturn cases based on racial discrimination, it is clear that many Americans, and especially White Americans, continued to have a “taste for blood.”
Although the book skims quickly over the last few decades, readers will be better prepared to understand the current controversies surrounding capital punishment, particularly with respect to racial bias. As a result, it would be well suited for undergraduates, but also death penalty scholars interested in how capital punishment has evolved over time in a single state. Nonetheless, and perhaps because he is so well versed on the subject, Kotch occasionally gets distracted by interesting but extraneous issues, such as prison conditions, or Thomas Edison’s personal push for electrocution. Instead, and as a way to make obvious to audiences outside North Carolina, more context regarding trends and reforms in the rest of the country would better illuminate why the history of a single state is important to understand. The answer is that the history of the death penalty in North Carolina is the history of the death penalty in America: one steeped in racism and reform, taking two steps forward and one step back. But it is also unique, as are the stories of the nearly 800 recorded executions before Furman v. Georgia (1972), some of whom Kotch tells in his book. These stories humanize the statistics, illuminate the moral and logistical difficulties of violent social control, and force us to confront the legacy of the death penalty in maintaining White supremacy, still today.
