Analysis Of In Our Names By Lesly K Gunter

The death penalty has been one of the most controversial debates in the United States. Some believe that an eye for an eye is an effective mean of punishment while others believe that such mean of punishment is not effective in modern society. Edward Koch believes the death penalty affirms the sanctity of life. In the article by Edward Koch, published in The New Republic, “Death and Justice: How Capital Punishment Affirms Life,’ he utilizes the rhetorical devices of ethos, pathos and logos to justify his position for the death penalty towards the people opposing the death penalty.

Primary Annotated Bibliography McCleskey v Kemp, 481 U.S. 279 (1987) McCleskey v Kemp is a Supreme Court case that highlighted racism in the death penalty process. The petitioner in the case provided a controversial statistical study that correlated racism in death penalty sentencings. The Supreme Court Justices were asked to answer the question of whether or not the statistical study provided could substantiate that the sentence in the case violated the petitioner’s eighth and fourteenth amendment rights. This case will be the main focus of my research paper.

He claims the prejudices of the judicial system handed out mandatory sentencing for those who used their constitutional right to have a trial by jury. The author builds a relationship with the audience by using Pathos in order to compel them to recognize the urgency to change the current law. Girault explains the failing logic of the law on page 225, he states that communities were to be made safer and instead of targeting petty crimes the focus would be to bring down kingpins, however after three decades of the SRA it still was a failure. Girault defines the sentencing reform act as discriminatory and states that minorities are hugely effected by this law and states ”Black people are overwhelming charged, convicted and sentenced at a higher rate to federal crimes since the passage of the Sentencing Reform Act.” (Girault 228).

American society has always wrestled with the concept and ethics of capital punishment. Despite the meticulous process involved when convicting someone, there are many questions and exceptions about who qualifies and the process in and of itself, as to be expected when dealing with something so profound and permanent. What if the accused is mentally ill? What if the perpetrator committed the crime when defending someone else? What if the convicted is innocent, but still put to death?

Ethos is the “way of convincing your audience of your credibility as a writer” (Modes of Persuasion). Kristof makes a reference to the novel “In Defense of a Liberal Education” by Fareed Zakaria. Zakaria’s novel defends the liberal arts by explaining how this degree creates critical thinkers. Students develop critical thoughts by learning how to write and formulate their own opinions. These skills are utilized in every job.

Since 1977, the majority of death row inmates in the United States have been executed for killing white people. Yet, studies have shown that African Americans make up almost half of all homicides victims. For this reason, for years, capital punishment has been a source of a lot of controversy among human rights advocates and the american government. The book Dead Man Walking depicts the journey of a nun, Sister Helen Prejean, against the biased judicial system in the United States. Focusing in the death penalty issue, Prejean share her deepest thoughts while she experiences being the spiritual adviser of a “dead man walking”, a man convicted to death.

The death penalty has been significantly changing according to these six cases: Atkins v. Virginia (2002), Roper v. Simmons (2002), Kennedy v. Louisiana (2008), Graham v. Florida (2010), and Miller v. Alabama (2012). These six cases discuss the “evolving standards of decency”. The “evolving standards of decency” state that the implementation of the death penalty is deemed unconstitutional for certain circumstances, defendants, and crimes. When implementing this test, the courts analyze the most prevalent opinions among the different state legislatures, judges, sentencing juries, and the general public in order to determine whether the use of the death penalty is cruel and unusual.

Research Paper: Capital Punishment Capital punishment is one of the most controversial and talked-about topics in the United States today. It is an issue that is not explicitly mentioned in our constitution, so states have been left to interpret the law. As of April 2017, 32 states in the US legally allow the death penalty. Of the 18 states that have banned it, the most recent was Maryland in 2013. The topic is so controversial that the Supreme Court has gotten involved many times, deciding on more cases that have to do with capital punishment than most other subjects.

The United States remains in the minority of nations in the world that still uses death as penalty for certain crimes. Capital punishment is seen by many as barbaric and against American values, while others see it as a very important tool in fighting violent pre-meditated murder. One of the supporters of the Death penalty was a man named Walter Berns (a professor of American constitutional law and political philosophy.) He wrote clearly about his view on the death penalty in his Crime and Delinquency article, “Defending the Death Penalty.” He argued that the “Opposition to capital punishment is a modern phenomenon, a product of modern sentiment and modern thought” (p. 504) and with the help of historical references and logical reasoning throughout

In the novel, All Our Names, Dinaw Mengestu explains the prejudice and stereotypes that African people were subjected to when they arrived to America in the 1960 's. Before Helen even met Isaac she assumed that he would be short, malnourished, and that his English would be poor. Upon meeting him, she realized that her assumptions about him were completely wrong. Towards the middle of the novel Helen stated," It 's also equally possible …. that, regardless of what we do, we are tied to all the prejudices in our country and the crimes that come with them" (Mengestu 113). She 's making the point that maybe despite all our efforts we still carry prejudiced opinions with us because they have been so deeply ingrained into our minds.

In the essay “The Death Penalty Is a Step Back” the author, Coretta Scott King expresses her feelings about capital punishment and states reasons to back up her argument that the death penalty is both a racist and immoral practice. King believes that capital punishment is immoral and illegal, and that it by no means serves as a deterrent for other possible criminals. The author then further talks about how there have been numerous incidents where the mistakenly convicted is put down in the name of American justice. King then argues that by sentencing someone to death, one is assuming that the person convicted is not capable of rehabilitation. The

I am not one to argue that capital punishment is without its flaws, nor am I one to argue that the death penalty is not inherently ugly in its entirety. I simply make the argument that the death penalty, or capital punishment, is a necessary evil. To accomplish this, I will begin by dissecting the arguments made by Stephen Nathanson in An Eye for an Eye. Nathanson states that for some crimes, it would not be considered morally acceptable to provide equal punishment to crimes committed. For example, I listed earlier that if we applied the equal punishment principle flatly across our justice system, it would require us to not only kill murderers, but also rape rapists, torture torturers, and kidnap kidnappers.

Her central thesis is that mass incarceration is “The New Jim Crow,” or the new system of control used by the government to uphold racial class in the U.S. This book will be helpful to my research because it directly discusses the topic of race and the criminal justice system. Amnesty International. (2003). United States of America: Death by discrimination

Another issue that was discussed is the inequality of death penalty in practice. There have been serious issues with racial discrimination. For reference in cases with white victims and black defendants convictions occurred twenty two percent of the time while with black victims and white defendants with percentage dropped to a measly three

She uses ethos here because the speech is from a graduation and she’s an expert in graduating because she experienced it herself and she has an excellent life now. “Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and convince myself that I am at the world’s largest Gryffindor reunion” (Page 1, column 1, line 10-13) This is an allusion because it’s a reference to her well-known Harry Potter book series. This reference is very good, because many people know of her work and therefore they will relate to the content. “I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure.