A Rhetorical Analysis Of The Economist By James Wilson

Jacquelyn Boddy has been missing since February 7, 2017. She was last at her house party, witnesses say they saw her walking out with a group. It is now believed she has been kidnapped or murdered. If seen she is a 23 year old and has dark blonde hair, she goes by Jackie, she is 5'4".

In the Timearticle More Innocent People on Death Row Than Estimated: Study by David VonDrehle, “almost four percent of U.S. capital punishment sentences are wrongful convictions,

In the last several years, too many people in the United States have been wrongfully sentenced with the death penalty. Several accused have their sentence overturned or they have been totally exonerated. There are at least 8 people who were executed by United States and later proven innocent (http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org). Over a 20 year period, 68% of all death sentences were reversed (http://karisable.com). A noteworthy example is of Jerry Banks who was convicted and sentenced with the death penalty for two counts of murder in 1975. Five years later, in 1980, Banks' conviction was overturned on the basis of newly discovered evidence which was allegedly known to the state at the time of trial. Another example was the case of Lawyer Johnson who was sentenced to death in 1971 by an all white jury for the murder of a white victim. Later in 1982, Johnson’s conviction was overturned and Johnson exonerated when a previously silent eyewitness identified the state’s chief witness as the real murderer. (http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org) Human error is inevitable, particularly

the Modern Death Penalty Is a Failed Experiment” is an article written by David Von Dregle and published in time magazine. In this article, the author believes the death penalty is wrong. He begins his essay by giving facts about the death penalty and the moral implications of why the death penalty is chosen citing the case of Dzhokar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bomber. He shows the logically reasoning as to why, as a society, we are willing to give the death penalty. However, he makes the point that Tsarnaev will not be executed soon as “he is one of more than 60 federal prisoners under sentence of execution in a country where only three federal death sentences have been carried

This brutal method of punishment has for a long time stay past its expiration date and needs to be put to an end immediately, just like the famous saying “Out with the old and in with the new.” Whatever the style of punishment might be maybe by shooting, electrocution, gassing, hanging or lethal injection it has accomplished nothing but terrorize not only the criminal, but the family and friends as well. There are a lot of negative scenarios that comes into mind whenever this divisive topic is raised, but the number one is that innocent people will be executed while the real criminals escape the punishment. The worst feeling of all is for the family to discover that their loved one was innocent. One of the most often asked questions associated with this brutal murder is what are the chances that an inmate being executed is innocent? The fact is that two out of every six inmates being executed is innocent. That information alone is enough to raise a lot of eyebrows. Throughout our history there have been mistakes in convictions of defendants and the death penalty prevents any opportunity to rectify any miscarriage of justice. Capital punishment is irrevocable, and the errors of justice cannot be rectified. All possibility of a change of heart is totally gone. An innocent person has been hanged or electrocuted and the judge, jury,

The death penalty has many advantages and disadvantages and the criminal justice system is constantly fighting the battle to keep it alive and well.

Aristotle once said “the generality of men are naturally apt to be swayed by fear rather than reverence, and to refrain from evil rather because of punishment that it brings than because of its own foulness.” Capital punishment has been intertwined in United States history for centuries with a number of crimes that could lead to the death penalty if convicted, many of them are some form of murder. Since 1977, three thousand and ninety-five defendants have been on death row and of that, only one thousand thirty eight defendants have actually been executed. But the perilous question is whether or not the defendants were sentenced based on solely the facts and nature of the crime or crimes, or were there other contributing factors that influenced the severity of the verdict. There are several social controversies that surround the people who are sent to death row, predominately bias and discrimination issues which are based on ethnicity, gender, and mental health.

The death penalty can lead to the death of innocent people. For example, “…According to a new study, serious errors occur in almost 70% of all trials leading to the death penalty…”(Leibman). This shows that if 100 people were put on death row, 70 would have serious mistakes in their

The American judicial system is not perfect, and its flaws sometimes bare adversely on the people of this society. For instance, just because someone is labeled a criminal, does not always necessitate the fact that they are a criminal. Brian Gilmore argues this point when he mentioned that within the past 30 years, 102 innocent individuals have been acquitted from death row in America. He says that those individuals were either not released due to legal technicalities or because evidence was lost. “These men and women did not commit their crimes. Yet somehow, they were arrested, convicted, and sentenced to die, and some came awfully close to execution” Gilmore claimed. Unfortunately, it seems as though mistakes such as this one occur far too often; then, they eventually go unnoticed as we forget that those people, criminals or not, are human just like us. Considering the large window of feasible error associated with the death penalty, it is best that Americans make every effort to eliminate the intentional practice of capital punishment on criminals.

“Since 1973, at least 121 people have been released from death row after evidence of their innocence emerged. During the same period of time, over 982 people have been executed. Thus, for every eight people executed, we have found one person on death row who never should have been convicted. These statistics represent an intolerable risk of executing the innocent” (“Innocence”).

According to a 1987 study published in the Stanford Law Review, at least 23 non-culpable individuals have been executed from 1900 to 1987, which is more than one innocent execution every four years. These miscarriages of justice are often due to evidence that was not discovered or made available until after the execution. Although recent scientific improvements, such as forensic DNA evidence, have enabled investigators to more accurately pinpoint guilt in a suspect, no current amount of scientific or technological advancement can completely guarantee that errors will never be made. In an issue such as the death penalty, where the stakes are so high – human life – any margin of error, no matter how minuscule, is unacceptable.

The biggest issue against the death penalty deals with the high probability of the wrongful conviction of innocent people. As stated before, 140 people have been removed from death row after additional evidence was found and proved their wrongful conviction (“U.S. Death Penalty Facts”,

Death sentences have decreased by 75% since the 1990s, but so has public support for this unethical punishment. Though the death penalty is not used as often today, there are still many flaws. Majority of the time, what should be irrelevant factors in deciding the verdict of a case, like the quality of legal representation and race, usually play a larger role than the severity of the crime. Ultimately, the death penalty should be outlawed, as it is bias and costly.

According to capital punishment supporters, many of these reasons of the anti-death penalty movement are false and are now wrongly accepted as fact. The argument that the death penalty does not deter crime is debatable. By executing murderers you prevent them from murdering again. If these people no longer exist then they obviously cannot commit more crimes. In addition, criminals have admitted, in thousands of fully documented cases, that the death penalty was the specific threat which deterred them from committing murder (Pro-Death Penalty, 2014). The opponents of capital punishment claim that the death penalty has caused and can cause the execution of innocent people. However, according to the supporters, no evidence indicates that innocent people have been executed. Upon reviewing 23 years of capital sentences, a Wall Street Journal study indicated that they were unable to find a single case in which an innocent person was executed (Eddlem, 2002). Furthermore, advocates note that the

In this paper, Sunstien and Vermuele claim that "each capital punishment execution spares the lives of 18 potential casualties". Most importantly, a numerical way to deal with illuminating human deceptions is improper. On top of that, the measurement given in backing of "capital punishment viability" is to a great extent second-hand. Of the a huge number of studies distributed on the subject in the course of the most recent decade or something like that, the vast majority of the proof in backing of the death penalty was taken from exploration discoveries taken numerous years back. Likewise, the discoveries were completed by politically moderate associations like the Brookings Institute, and so forth, which is prone to be one-sided in its perspectives. In addition, "late confirmation" proposes that the death penalty does not spare lives more than to a shallow degree (Smith,