Sarah Beth Kaufman - American Roulette: The Social Logic of Death Penalty Sentencing Trials

Sarah Beth Kaufman

University of California Press

Oakland, California

2020 by Sarah Beth Kaufman

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Kaufman, Sarah Beth, author.

Title: American roulette : the social logic of death penalty sentencing trials / Sarah Beth Kaufman.

Description: Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2020] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019045949 (print) | LCCN 2019045950 (ebook) | ISBN 9780520344389 (cloth) | ISBN 9780520344396 (paperback) | ISBN 9780520975507 (ebook)

Subjects: lcsh: Capital punishmentUnited States. | Sentences (Criminal procedure)United States. | Criminal justice, Administration ofSocial aspectsUnited States.

Classification: LCC KF 9227. C 2 K 38 2020 (print) | LCC KF 9227.C2 (ebook) | DDC 345.73/0773dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019045949

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019045950

Manufactured in the United States of America

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Though I didnt know it at the time, this book began during the late 1990s in New Orleans, where Christopher Eades, Shauneen Lambe, Mike Lenore, Billy Sothern, and I learned to negotiate the worlds of criminal justice advocacy and young adulthood simultaneously. I dedicate this book to them and to R. Neal Walker, whose presence was unforgettable, in court and out.

The majority of the book was written more than a decade later, when Charley Price gave me the gifts of joy and time, for which I am eternally grateful. Our remarkable children Raymond Everett Kaufman Price and Aviva Faith Kaufman Price are evidence of the best of us both.

The path between these two time periods was not at all straight, and could have taken a turn at several junctions. That I became a scholar is a testament to friends, family, and teachers. I was first a graduate student at Tulane University where Joel Devine, Beth Fussell, Melinda Milligan, and especially Scott Frickel exemplified sociologys potential. Scott introduced me to something called the sociology of knowledge, which I did not realize I had been looking for. I was then mentored by an extraordinary group of scholars at New York University. Primary among these was David Garland. That his scholarship shaped this book is evident. Less evident is his influence as a human being. Whether I was at my worst or at my best, David was as incisive and kind a mentor as any Ive ever met. He is a model to me. Craig Calhoun and Richard Sennett were also formative advisors. They introduced me to cultural sociology and the NYLON network that provided my much-loved institutional home. Craigs generosity is as astonishing as his mind, offering without hesitation his home, family, and dogs, as if his detailed and always brilliant feedback wasnt enough. Richards insistence on the human, creative aspects of sociology inspires me to this day. NYLON gave me the opportunity to appreciate the smarts and friendship ofamong othersWill Davies, Saran Ghatak, Jane Jones, Monika Krause, Amy Leclair, Tey Meadow, Ashley Mears, Owen Whooley, and Grace Yukich, all of whom read and commented on earlier drafts of this work. I love you all. Lynne Haney, Rayna Rapp, Eric Klinenberg, and David Greenberg were teachers and advisors extraordinaire.

I conducted research for the book while traveling around the country. In this, I benefited not only from a National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant in the Law and Social Sciences (#0719721), but also from the homes, conversations, and other essentials provided by Richard Bourke and Christine Lehman, Ellen and George Galland, Hillary Galland, Scharlette Holdman, Jane Jones, Phil, Ronnie, and Aron Kaufman, Monika Krause, Maya Kremen and Jeff Davies, Denny LeBoeuf, Amy Leclair, Ashley Mears, Katya Semyonova, Rebecca Snedeker, Billy Sothern and Nikki Page, and Kim Watts. I also spent a year as a visiting scholar in the Department of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. There Javier Auyero, Ben Carrigan, Danielle Dirks, Sheldon Eckland-Olsen, Jim Marcus, Mary Rose, and Meredith Rountree were wise guides. Mary LaMotte Silverstein also provided editorial advice and, with Jake Silverstein, great intellectual and emotional companionship.

I cannot say enough how fortunate I am to then have landed at Trinity University in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. My colleagues Christine Drennon, Jennifer Matthews, Meredith McGuire, Alfred Montoya, Tahir Naqvi, Richard Reed, Ben Sosnaud, David Spener, and Amy Stone are the absolute best of academia. Bill Christ, Stacey Connelly, Irma DeLeon, Kathleen Denny, Habiba Noor, Elizabeth Rahilly, Kate Schubert, Sussan Siavoshi, and Claudia Stokes have also supported me intellectually, organizationally, and emotionally. My weekly writing groupPatrick Gallagher, Anne Hardgrove, and Tahir Naqvikept me on task and laughing despite the neoliberal charter school advocates encroachment. At Trinity, an excellent cadre of undergraduate researchers worked on this project with me. To Faith Deckard, Erin Drake, Frances Kennedy-Long, Madison Matthies, Jacob Metz-Lerman, and Lily Sorrentino: thank you! I am also indebted to Trinity Universitys president, Danny Anderson, and the vice president for academic affairs, Deneese Jones, who enabled this project by trusting me (and funding me!) to stray from it. It was only by collaborating with Habiba and Bill on our play, To Be Honest, that this book took its shape. While on pretenure leave granted by Trinity, I also benefited from the care of Emily Bolton and Clive Stafford-Smith (even in absentia), Megan Colletta and Bill Short, and Shauneen Lambe in Dorset and London.

To turn the manuscript into a book, I could not imagine a better team than mine at the University of California Press, including Madison Wetzell, Cindy Fulton, and Jeff Wyneken. Patrick Anderson and Maura Rossener in particular improved this book in ways that I did not anticipate. I waited to finish it until you were ready to help me, I think! Thank you for going above and beyond. I also thank Garth Bryant, Craig Calhoun, Ron Levi, and Mary Rose for feedback on chapter 3.

Finally, in a category of their own are my parents, Phil and Ronnie Kaufman. Among the thousands of ways they helped during this projects formulation, my mother rescued me from an employment disaster and cared for my children. My father read chapter drafts and never hid his pride. For them I am so very lucky. And to Steve Kaufman: I would never have gotten to this place without your tremendous support.

My mistakes, of course, remain all my own.

Two chapters were published in earlier versions as journal articles: chapter 4 appeared as Citizenship and Punishment: Situating Death Penalty Jury Sentencing, Punishment and Society: The International Journal of Penology 13, no. 3 (2011): 33353; and chapter 7 as Mourners in the Court: Victims in Death Penalty Trials, through the Lens of Performance, Law and Social Inquiry: Journal of the American Bar Foundation 42, no. 4 (2017): 115578.

I first encountered the death penalty up close in 1998 when I was twenty-two. After college, I worked as an investigator at a small nonprofit law office in New Orleans, Louisiana, that represented poor people accused of capital murder. Much of my work involved gathering evidence to help demonstrate to juries that seemingly reprehensible defendants might also deserve compassion. One of the first cases I was assigned involved a man named Albert, who was a few years older than I. Albert was nineteen when he was accused of committing murder, and while I passed my early adulthood at a prestigious East Coast university, he spent his on death row. He and his family were raised in a plantation culture that still exists in parts of the southeastern United States; the family had lived and worked on the same farm continuously since Alberts grandparents were enslaved. According to the court record, the farm owner, Joey Smith, a direct descendent of the owner of the plantation on which Alberts grandfather was condemned to servitude, hired Albert to kill his second wife. Albert considered Smith to be not only his boss but also an archetypal godfathera parraine, as it is called in Cajun countrywho was responsible for his familys livelihood. Albert had been following Joeys orders since he was young, and believed that he and his family would be in danger if he disobeyed any request Joey made. There was little question that Albert had been involved in killing Joeys second wife; he confessed to shooting her at Joeys instruction and helping to make it look like a robbery. But Albert tested as having an intellectual disability, and he had never committed any other violent act. Joey was suspected of involvement with the mysterious disappearance of his first wife and had been convicted of federal drug trafficking. The inequality that our office was trying to reconcile was that Joey, nearly twenty years Alberts senior, was sentenced to live the rest of his years in prison, while Albert was to be executed for an act he committed while still a teenager. Albert deserved, at worst, a sentence equal to his parraine s. This was the first example of an unforgettable lesson I would learn during my years in Louisiana: the murderers who seem to be the most morally despicable are not necessarily those who are sentenced to death row.