Volume 2.1 - Crime and Punishment- Fall 1997

Title: Last Chance for the Condemned: Do Media Matter in Gubernatorial Clemency Decisions?

Author: David Protess

Abstract: This study investigated the news media's agenda-setting influence on gubernatorial clemency decisions in four Illinois death penalty cases. It found that press coverage of the cases had little effect on the governor's exercise of his discretionary clemency power, even when a journalistic campaign for clemency mobilized public opinion on behalf of a condemned inmate. Instead, established political, legal, and organizational considerations prevailed. The study also examined factors that shaped the media's agenda in the final phase of capital cases, and found that press portrayals were influenced by the same norms that govern the coverage of violent crime, thereby circumscribing public discourse about capital punishment. The article concludes by reviewing recent developments in death penalty cases that offer a variety of opportunities for further research.

About the Author: David Protess is a professor of journalism at Northwestern University, where he is also a faculty fellow at the Institute for Policy Research. He is the co-author of The Journalism Outrage: Investigative Reporting and Agenda-Building in America (Guilford, 1991) and two books about miscarriages of justice, Gone in the Night, (Delacorte, 1993) and A Promise of Justice (Hyperion, in press).

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