I would be wary of drawing that causal relationship it like tail wagging the dog. I would rather say that both violence in everyday life and infatuation with dp have common cause(s) or social roots. On the pain of versimplicfication I'd identify such roots as the absence of complex social organization and thus alternative means of social control that characterise rural societies. Stated differently, in more complex (and affluent) forms of social organization you can exercise control by gradual withdrawal of privileges: you loose you chance for a promotion, then your job, then your West Side apartment, then your sociaol status and your circle of friends, then any fixed roof over your head at all, then your freedom, and finally your life. In th eless complex societies, such gradation is not possible because not too many prvileges exist. You have basicall three steps: corporal punishment, incarceration, execution.
At least that is how I interpret Foucault's "Discipline and Punish" - the growth of urban society was the main cause behind both the growth of social science and the abandonment of corporal punishment for more sophisticated means of social control (rather than the former causing the latter).
PS. I feel a strong revulsion toward dp and, for that matter, any other form of killing, ritualistic (such as hunting) or otherwise. However, I am trying to understand its attraction to many, instead taking a high moral ground on it, and even less so to save a few violent US citizens from the gallows.
wojtek