Exculpating Injustice: Coroner Constructions of White Innocence in the Postbellum South

Research notes the broad complicity of white public officials in historical racial violence and repression. These discussions emphasize role criminal justice actors perpetrating enabling this Extending assessment, authors examine coroners’ facilitation dominance through administrative performances constructing innocence. Using cases from post-Emancipation South Carolina, document race-related patterns exculpatory effort, omission curation evidence amid post-Reconstruction rise supremacist redemption. The theorize that these efforts helped sustain an ideology innocence institutional legitimacy by a “law-abiding” public. argue such coroner misconduct not only degrades rule law but has broader implications, including its corruption corpus mortality crime data. Finally, suggest persist present-day reporting, exculpation racist police violence.