Seattle University Collaborative Projects - International Academy of ...

Victim Impact Evidence and the Limits of Evidentiary Discourse: Reconsideringthe Probative, the Prejudicial, and the EmotionalSusan Bandes, University of Miami (sbandes@law.miami.edu)Legal discourse about whether various types of evidence are relevant or irrelevant, probative orprejudicial, too often relies on the simplistic assumption that evidence that evokes emotion mustbe prejudicial, irrelevant or both. This assumption is problematic for two reasons: it is at oddswith the growing consensus that emotion is an integral and often desirable part of the decisionmakingprocess, and it interferes with the legal system’s ability to distinguish between – orarticulate distinctions between – helpful and unhelpful types of evidence. This paper will usevarious types of victim impact statements, including documentary statements, statementsdelivered by live witnesses, and video montages with an audio component, as a lens throughwhich to consider the role of emotion in conveying legal information, and how legal discoursemight better evaluate and regulate that role.Visibly and Invisibly Offensive Offenders: Contrasting Timothy McVeigh andOsama bin LadenJody Lyneé Madeira, Indiana University (jmadeira@indiana.edu)Over the past 150 years, the practice of capital punishment has altered dramatically. The grislypublic spectacles favored for centuries have been moved inside prison walls, and painfulexecutions have been gradually replaced by ever more humane and discrete lethal technologies.This paper will consider how the visual dynamics inherent in execution, and thus the culture ofexecution, are in flux, dependent upon execution method, the medium of execution witnessing,and the identities of the condemned and the execution witnesses. Based on qualitative interviewswith victims of the Oklahoma City Bombing and 9-11, this presentation will focus on how thedeaths of two very visible terrorist defendants, Timothy McVeigh and Osama bin Laden,affected family members and survivors. Prior research shows that, from the moment ofMcVeigh’s perp walk, the Oklahoma City victims felt as if they were yoked with McVeigh in aninvoluntary relationship that terminated when McVeigh was silenced and rendered invisiblethrough lethal injection. Key questions to be answered are to what extent 9-11 victims felt yokedwith bin Laden in an involuntary relationship, how this relationship was experienced, how the“framing” of the terroristic act (domestic terrorism or mass murder versus an act of war) changedthis relationship, and whether this relationship changes when the offender is executed without acapital trial and when there is no opportunity to witness the offender’s death.241