As a part of the continuing John D. Lewis lectureship series, Timothy Kaufman-Osborn (OC ’76), Baker Ferguson Professor of Politics and Leadership at Whitman College, spoke to a large audience of students, faculty and town residents Wednesday afternoon.
Mr. Kaufman-Osborn’s talk, titled From Noose to Needle: Capital Punishment and the Late Liberal State: The Failure of Lethal Injection, was based on his recent book by the same title. The book has received critical acclaim as insightful, thorough and timely.
Mr. Kaufman-Osborn’s search for perspective on “the problematic status of state-sponsored killing,” began “accidentally” in 1993 when he attended an anti-death sentence protest against Washington state’s first execution by hanging since the mid sixties.
Since then, Mr. Kaufman-Osborn has studied the technological and legal shifts in the history of American capital punishment.
His talk traced these evolutions and considered the paradox of liberal states that on the one hand wish to assert their sovereignty through acts of capital punishment and on the other have a central discourse of rights that conflicts with the brutality of executions.
This paradox has, according to Mr. Kaufman-Osborn, meant the short-term success of lethal injection, a method of execution that is a “non-event” insofar as it masks the killing act, leaving “no indication that the body has been brutalized.”
He predicted the long-term failure of lethal injection precisely because it leaves no trace, leaving the desire for vengeance or retribution — the reason most Americans currently support capital punishment — unsatisfied.
Mr. Kaufman-Osborn’s talk and book come at a time when the national debate over capital punishment has come back into focus.
Recently, the Republican Governor of Illinois George Ryan shocked the public by commuting the sentences of all 167 inmates on death row in his state to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, citing wide-ranging problems in the capital system.
But debates continue about whether such gestures only foster resentment in the public rather than encourage discussion over the fairness of the criminal justice system.
Mr. Kaufman-Osborn’s studies center on the basic question of whether it is appropriate for the state to serve as executioner.
During his visit Mr. Kaufman-Osborn, who is also president of the Washington State American Civil Liberties Union, met with students interested in current civil liberties issues to discuss the measures he and his students have taken at Whitman.
“It [was] a great pleasure to bring Tim back to Oberlin,” said professor of Politics Harlan Wilson.