Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, May 13, 1994 TAG: 9405130106
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: RALEIGH, N.C. LENGTH: Medium
Donahue and death row inmate David Lawson are asking the North Carolina Supreme Court to overrule a prison warden who denied permission to tape and broadcast Lawson's June 15 execution.
Donahue says the public has a right to see it. Lawson says it will give his life meaning.
State officials say it will make a spectacle of a somber event. They cite the atmosphere outside the Illinois prison where John Wayne Gacy was executed this week.
``This is a solemn occasion,'' Secretary of Correction Franklin Freeman said. ``It should not be turned into a circus.''
Donahue wouldn't comment, but an affidavit he filed with the lawsuit said television is the most accurate medium and that the public deserves information about capital punishment so it can decide if it's right or wrong.
George Gerbner, dean emeritus of the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania, agreed with Freeman that televising executions would result in more demand for them.
``It would only satisfy the thirst for vengeance that is unwarranted,'' he said. ``It's a ghoulish spectacle that's bound to have a brutalizing, desensitizing effect on a public jaded by images of violence.''
Freeman said televised executions would be the equivalent of public hangings, which attracted vendors and hundreds of spectators before they were banned.
Execution in North Carolina is by gas or lethal injection. Lawson, condemned for the 1980 murder of a man who was shot during a home break-in, has until five days before the execution to choose the method.
Lawson says criminals aren't deterred from crime by the threat of execution. The broadcast of his execution would draw attention to depression and the consequences if it goes untreated, he said.
by CNB