Changing The State's Death Penalty

Alabama remains the only state where an elected judge has the option to override a jury's recommendation for a life sentence and sentence the prisoner to the death penalty. An Equal Justice Initiative study conducted a few years ago found that more judicial overrides occur during election years and involve the death penalty. Of the 111 cases in which a judicial override has taken place since 1976, 99 percent involved imposing the death penalty.

The next website we decided to analysis for our ethos assignment is the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation website. The organization is basically about saving animals that are endangered species. They help save anything from rhinos to pangolins. Since we are against the hunting of animals, this foundation attracted our attention.

People cannot survive without money; it is a necessity and the value of money is what keeps some people existing. Money plays a fundamental role in society and the greed people have for it shows its importance. In the piece, I am piece of paper and I own your soul, the artist appeals to ethos, logos and pathos to convey that how the everyday individual is consumed by money. The artist appeals to ethos by utilizing large bolded font and detail to present the consumption of money.

For a considerable length of time, the Supreme Court has been occupied with a vigorous push to improve the jury's part in criminal courts. Juries in Florida capital punishment cases have just an admonitory part in any case, and even that impact on the judge is conceivably decreased by the absence of unanimity and by the judge's power to settle on the key choices in any case. The Justices endeavored to control that part, and give a greater amount of it to the jury, in a 2002 choice yet the Florida Supreme Court has basically exempted the state's death penalty process from that running the show. Arizona thirteen years prior, the Supreme Court decided that a judge may not make the genuine discoveries about "disturbing variables" — the wrongdoing's reality that can make an individual qualified to be sentenced to death — on the grounds that that part under the Sixth Amendment has a place with the jury.

The state of Oklahoma alone has executed 195 people for crimes such as rape, murder and kidnapping. (“Crimes Punishable”) In the Constitution of the United States the eight amendment prohibits “cruel; and unusual punishment” inflicted on those who have been convicted of a crime. A total of 34 states have performed executions on people for various crimes. How do we know what is or isn’t “cruel; and unusual punishment”? Some would say the death penalty is stretching the ways of the law and others would say it is a complete violation of the constitution. The views of people are split evenly. People want others to pay for what they’ve done but may think that the death penalty is a little too extreme. Oklahoma is a very conservative state, and we like to do things the “old way”. With society changing so frequently we rarely match what the others states are doing and we could potentially be seen as a “bad” state. So the decisions such as whether or not to have the death penalty affects all Oklahomans and some aren’t okay with that. In the paragraphs below we will explore all aspects of the death penalty, and by the end we will find out what made the people decide the death penalty was constitutional and what exactly the people’s opinions on this subject are.

After the Truth is a German film directed by Roland Suso Richter. This film is crafted in a cunning way to bring out a display of pathos through prejudice controversy. Richter reestablishes the need to discuss the hostility against the Jews even in the present setting of the movie by the use of logos. Instead of critiquing the choices Mengele made in World War Two. Richter places you in Mengele's mindset while leaving you to ponder whether or not we all have a evilly twisted monster like side that's caged within us.

The constitution says nothing pertaining to capital punishment, thus the supreme court left the decision up to individual states to decide what to do with their residents. Some states, such as Michigan, do not partake in the death penalty. Eighteen states have completely outlawed the act, and many more have not executed a person in over a decade.

1. What is the definition of Ethos presented in the text? Give an example of ethos from this graphic novel and explain it.

The correct usage of ethos can influence the audience. The consistency in proper grammar usage assist all writers without a doubt to grow credibility because it shows the writer cares about the audience experience, shows the writer has confidence which allows others to believe whatever the writer is speaking about must be true, and educated peers will take the writer seriously. Writers caring about the audience experience. Writers should always focus on the audience understanding how they feel and what they need. In order to do that, writers must understand the power of words and how individuals react differently.

    Goffman uses a chart to demonstrate to her audience how the United States imprisons about 716 people per 100,000 citizens, which was compared to all the other countries in the world, the United States incarceration rate is extremely high. She issues us with the information that the incarceration rates have gone up by 700% in the past 40 years. By providing this information, even using a chart, she uses great examples of logos.

In the United States, 36 states participate in capital punishment in one or more of the five different forms, including lethal injection, electrocution, gas chambers, firing squad, and hanging (“Description of Execution”). After being banned in 1972, several states sought to bring back capital punishment by providing sentence guidelines for both jury and judges when deciding the fit case in which to impose death (“Introduction to the Death Penalty”). These guidelines proved the punishment was constitutional under the Eight Amendment, proving it wasn’t “cruel and unusual” punishment under the correct circumstances. Three procedural reforms were approved by the case Gregg vs. Georgia, including bifurcated trials (separating guilt and penalty phases of trial), automatic appellate reviews of court decisions, and proportionality review to help eliminate sentencing disparities (“Introduction to the Death Penalty”). Ever since these changes in 1976, the death penalty

The death penalty has been around since the time of Jesus Christ. Executions have been recorded from the 1600s to present times. From about 1620, the executions by year increased in the US. It has been a steady increase up until the 1930s; later the death penalty dropped to zero in the 1970s and then again rose steadily. US citizens said that the death penalty was unconstitutional because it was believed that it was "cruel and unusual" punishment (Kurtis 67). In the 1970s, the executions by year dropped between zero and one then started to rise again in the 1980s. In the year 2000, there were nearly one hundred executions in the US (Biskupic 34). On June 29, 1972, the death penalty was suspended because the existing laws were no longer convincing. However, four years after this occurred, several cases came about in Georgia, Florida, and Texas where lawyers wanted the death penalty. This set new laws in these states and later the Supreme Court decided that the death penalty was constitutional under the Eighth Amendment (Biskupic 34).

Scientific studies have consistently failed to demonstrate that executions deter people from committing crime anymore than long prison sentences. Therefore, states without the death penalty have much lower murder rates. The South accounts for 80% of US executions and has the highest regional murder rate. Since they apparently don't mind the fact that they will get killed for these things, why waste so much time on appeals and meals for them? Why dont we just take them out back and shoot them? On May 23, 2013, Maryland became the latest state to outlaw capital punishment. They apparently like spending entirely too much money on convicts that want to rape the children of america and mess them all up worse than they already are. 17 other states already had the death penalty outlawed. Hanging is still used in Delaware, Washington and New hampshire. Although lethal injection is the chosen alternative, hanging is still used if it is chosen by the criminal. The last hanging to take place was in Delaware on January 25, 1996. The last man to be executed by firing squad went by the name “Gardner”. On April 2, 1985 he was facing a murder charge. After a failed attempt to escape from the courthouse, and a murdered attorney, later he was put on death row. (For his “last meal” he got lobster tail, steak, apple pie, and vanilla ice cream while watching The Lord of the Rings trilogy, but I will also bet that the attorneys family would have loved to have a “last meal” with their husband and father too.) Now you see, if they would have just killed him the first time that attorney would have got to go home to his family and we would have had one less crazy person in america. The state abandoned firing squads in 2004, but has now returned as an option due to a shortage of lethal injection

The first established death penalty laws date as far back as the Eighteenth Century B.C. in the Code of King Hammurabi of Babylon, which codified the death penalty for 25 different crimes ("History of the Death Penalty" 1). Executions back then relied on more torturous methods without regard to the executed. As the use of the Death Penalty was issued out, its popularity spread throughout the neighboring countries and has become more refined for modern use. In June of 2004, “New York’s death penalty law was declared unconstitutional by the state’s high court” (“History…” 3). Between the early 1950’s and late 1970’s, the death penalty became suspended for going against the constitution, only to get reinstated after the brief pausing period. Having to take a pausing period to consider options for taking a human life merely demonstrates how confused and undecided the supreme court can be when it comes to choosing the route of convicts. According to the Bureau of Justice, before the Kennedy v. Louisiana case of 2008, in Texas, “..the only other penalty punishable by death besides murder is the rape of a child under 14..” (“History...” 16). No convictions have happened since establishment, yet the supreme court finds it okay to take a human life despite the convict not taking one themselves. While rape is punishable by multiple years or sentences depending on severity in Texas, deciding to take the life of a human being when no murder has been conducted shows how unfairly a court

For every unlawful deed, there is a consequence; and under the law of the state of Florida, death is an option for those who commit capital punishment crimes. In fact, Florida was the first state to reinstate the death penalty after the Supreme Court case Furman v. Georgia, and consequently, it was the first state to perform an actual execution after the court case settled. Though many citizens and politicians consider the state of Florida harsher than most states concerning the death sentence, it still falls short in one respect: gender bias.