An Experience of Time in the Capital Judicial Process

Time is everywhere in the American death penalty and it expresses itself through complex potential temporalities. A time-study investigation can be used to demonstrate that the comity review mechanisms have formed a specific flow of, ?capital judicial time,? in which the state and the individual find themselves in a contest to control linearity for a directed betweeness of one point to another. The triggering event of the capital charge sets in motion branchable opportunities for either a sustained life or a state sanctioned death, but what this article argues is that the state is able to initiate processes to monopolise determinism which puts pressure on the petitioner to utilise different time forms. Viewing this contest through a temporal lens reveals significant examples of time-distortion by the state in an attempt to achieve a death sentence and an execution. Hence, time-study has the potential to provide an alternative constitutional methodology to undermine the legitimacy of the capital judicial process.