Of guilt, defiance, and repentance: Evidence from the texas death chamber

Abstract

Despite the longstanding research tradition looking at administration of the death penalty jurisprudentially, scholarship has only begun to examine such punishment within the paradigm of emotionally intelligent justice. By mapping the intersections of sanctions and emotions, emotionally intelligent justice has been advanced as a way to reduce the cruelty of offenders and of the justice system itself. Utilizing executed inmates' final statements for the period December, 1982 through early June, 2005 and controls for offense and offender characteristics, this study examines the manner in which starkly personal pronouncements manifest in the Texas execution chamber. Descriptive analyses illustrate a broad swath of emotions as offenders approach their deaths, while multivariate models suggest that the presence of homicide survivors (victims' families and friends) at executions facilitates expressions of guilt and repentance, but not defiance, in offenders. Implications for future research are discussed.