The sounds of executions: sonic flaws and the transformation of capital punishment

A robust literature addresses the historical transformation of executions, but it does so without attention to sound. To help us understand how the audible aspects of executions impacted these transformations, we develop a concept we call sonic flaws. Sonic flaws are characterized neither by their loudness nor their nuisance quality. Rather, sonic flaws are sounds that not only intrude upon but also undermine the social settings in which they are heard. As transgressions of not only the sonic but also the moral order, the notion of sonic flaws also captures sonic conflicts and resistances by sonic means. Based on an analysis of newspaper accounts of executions in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, we identify the construction of sonic flaws around three different types of sounds: sounds of emotions, sounds of death, and sounds of resistance. Most importantly, we show how managerial efforts to address sonic flaws turned the execution into a space guided by middle-class sensibilities and dominated by an aspiration for silence.