I am mulling over some paper topics and found an interesting section that was supposed to be part of the reading for the discussion day that I lead. Due to time, we cut that down to the first 30 pages.
Foucault (starting on pg. 43) talks about certain manifestations of truth and why those manifestations of truth were performed in public.
1. "It made the guilty man the herald of his own condemnation."
2. "It took up once again the scene of the confession. It duplicated the forced proclamation of the amende honorable with a spontaneous, public acknowledgement."
3. "It pinned the public torture on to the crime itself; it established from one to the other a series of decipherable relations. It was an exhibition of the corpse of the condemned man at the scene of his crime, or at one of the near-by crossroads."
4. Lastly, the slowness of the process of torture and execution, its sudden dramatic movements, the cries and sufferings of the condemned man serve as an ultimate proof at the end of the judicial ritual. Every death agony expresses a certain truth: but, when it takes place on the scaffold, it does so with more intensity..."
Foucault discusses how we have moved away from the aforementioned system and into the mind of the condemned man but I don't think it's that simple. In many examples we can still see very public manifestations of the truth performed in public. Many high profile cases draw media attention which is in many ways more insidious than an actual public square.
The recent case of Casey Anthony is an excellent example of this to me of justice being served in public. Whether that woman was found guilty or innocent there would be people demanding her head despite the our legal system being built upon a foundation of presumed innocence.
I am not making the case that we have not moved into a time where the mens rea and mental health of the accused are subjects of interest when determining why someone committed a crime; to do so would be impossible. What we have today is a hybrid combining the modern with the spectacle.
I agree. Foucault notes that the trial has replaced the spectacle of the scaffold. Since punishment has been taken out of public view, it's really all people can focus on. I also believe that by including various social scientists in the judgement process it has made trials more interesting. Who would watch Nancy Grace if all she debated was if a punishable offense was committed?
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