California Death Penalty Case Study

In “The Death Penalty” (1985), David Bruck argues that the death penalty is injustice and that it is fury rather than justice that compels others to “demand that murderers be punished” by death. Bruck relies on varies cases of death row inmates to persuade the readers against capital punishment. His purpose is to persuade readers against the death penalty in order for them to realize that it is inhuman, irrational, and that “neither justice nor self-preservation demands that we kill men whom we have already imprisoned.” Bruck does not employ an array of devices but he does employ some such as juxtaposition, rhetorical questions, and appeals to strengthen his argument. He establishes an informal relationship with his audience of

In 1985, David Bruck wrote an article titled The Death Penalty in the New Republic. In the article, David Bruck wrote a rebuttal to the assertions that New York Mayor Ed Koch had in support of the death penalty. Mayor Koch asserted that the death penalty gave proper respect to the lives of the victims. However, Bruck argued that the death penalty gave the voice to the murders, and that the spectacle created an event that was less than respectful to the victims. Mayor Koch also points out that there has been no evidence that innocent people have sentenced to death. However, Bruck uses Mayor Koch’s own source to prove that innocents had been wrongly convicted, but that those cases did not involve the death penalty. Consequently, the finality

     What are we mad about electricity rates, gasoline prices, traffic congestion and crowded schools? We’re missing the point here. What were missing here is some good, old and honest anger about an issue that has been a concern for decades – California’s Death Penalty. The Death Penalty has long been a problem in California from costs, deterrence, overcrowded prisons, execution of the innocent and so on. Then if were having all these problems why should we continue using this system?

The state of California is currently suffering from a state deficit so great it would seem wise to restructure the death penalty as it stands now rather than cut education programs and jobs. California is a state which supports capital punishment; it is also a state that very rarely executes it death row inmates. In the last several years, California’s public educations system has taken on enormous budget cuts due to the state revenue crisis. As political leaders gather in the senate and review the gravity of the state’s situation, political leaders should examine how restructuring the death penalty and implementing life without parole would be beneficial for the state and those residing within the state itself. Utilizing the death penalty

What are we mad about electricity rates, gasoline prices, traffic congestion and crowded schools? We're missing the point here. What were missing here is some good, old and honest anger about an issue that has been a concern for decades – California's Death Penalty. The Death Penalty has long been a problem in California from costs, deterrence, overcrowded prisons, execution of the innocent and so on. Then if were having all these problems why should we continue using this system?

I think Texas needs to discriminate certain behaviors. Many people spent so many years in prison waiting to be executed. I think the government needs to reduce the waiting period for only those people who they are sure that they committed the crime and needs to be executed. Most of the time it’s unfair because those people spend their years waiting and enjoying in prison while the family members are still waiting for justice. It’s unfair that sometimes the family members don’t even witness the justice because they die before the person who committed the crime is executed. The Texas government also needs to reduce jail length for people arrested because of possession of drugs. The government needs to punish them, instead of putting them in

There was a proposition on the ballot this year that was proposing to replace the death penalty with life imprisonment without the possibility of parole instead. This proposition would have also increased those inmates’ wages. The proposition claimed that doing this would have reduced the costs of around $150 million dollars annually within a few years. When saving money supersedes punishing those who have committed crimes so atrocious that is when we have failed as a state, and as a country. The death penalty is saved for those who have committed crimes that were so unforgivable and heinous that they cannot be allowed to live. The crimes that they committed were so wicked that they were shocking to the public,

The California Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation, give a thorough background to the death penalty. The CDCR confirm that the introducing of the death penalty here in California, began due to the Criminal Practices Act of 1851 along with the penal code that was reinstated the fourteenth of February, 1872. According to the CDCR, there are two maximum facilities who held executions in California, being in San Quentin and Folsom. The first ever execution was held on the third of March, 1893 in San Quentin maximum facility. Folsom following their first on the thirteenth of December. 1895. Throughout the years, over 215 inmates in San Quentin and 92 in Folsom were executed, none being documented correctly. Thus, leading into the California

People not only in California, but in many other states and countries kill their own kind. They take another’s life, but yet they are left with their own. They plot in their own time to find ways to murder or assault others. What would the penalty for such an action be, in essence, they would be sentenced to death for their actions. In the research I have done, around twenty-eight states in the united states use the death penalty. I am here to support the use of the death penalty in California. The death penalty should be used in California because killers are still able to see their families when the victim's family is not able to, murder is never justifiable, and a person who has been convicted of a capital felony shall be punished by death.

This decline culminated in an unofficial national moratorium on executions in the late 1960’s that became official with the Supreme Court’s decision in Furman v. Georgia (408 U.S. 238, 1972). The decision in Furman officially ended the death penalty in the United States, as then practiced. However, just four years later in Gregg v. Georgia (429 U.S. 1301, 1976), the Supreme Court, citing change in public opinion and the passage of new death penalty statutes by 35 states, reauthorized the use of capital punishment. Despite the reversal, the effect of the decision in Furman was to put states on notice that the Supreme Court would be the ultimate arbiter of all future standards and rules regarding capital punishment administration (Cohen & Newcombe, 2014). At the national level, the 2001 execution of Timothy McVeigh marked the first time the death penalty had been used by the federal government in almost four decades, despite the continuous existence of a federal statute authorizing its use since the inception of the nation (“Federal Executions 1927-20013,” Death Penalty Information Center,

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).

David Bruck, attorney, disagrees with Edward Koch, that the death penalty “affirms life” (1985). David Bruck uses the example of the execution of Joseph Carl Shaw (page 1)

“On Jan 7, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments challenging the lethal three-Drug cocktail used in most U.S executions. In a perfect world, perhaps, the government wouldn’t wait 30 years to determine whether an execution method makes sense” Von Drehle, D (2008). So many Americans are being sentenced to death, and we stand back and wonder how this can be happening. It happens because we have criminals and so we will continue to have crime, and instead of trying to figure out the who, what, where and why we would rather put them to death. The reasons to abolish the death penalty go on and on, what about the

In this paper, the authors examine how the death penalty argument has changed in the last 25 years in the United States. They examine six specific issues: deterrence, incapacitation, caprice and bias, cost innocence and retribution; and how public opinion has change regarding these issues. They argue that social science research is changing the way Americans view the death penalty and suggest that Americans are moving toward an eventual abolition of the death penalty.

In Stephen Bright’s article, “The Death Penalty as the Answer to Crime: Costly, Counterproductive, and Corrupting” Bright asserts that capital punishment does not work because it is racially biased, the quality of the lawyers and attorneys supplied by the state to poor defendants is unfair, and that the law system currently in place does not accomplish its true goals. Bright defends his claim with logos and ethos by examining the opinions of judges and district attorneys, and by describing experience within the fields of human rights and law himself in order to persuade the reader to take up more cases for those on death row. Given the language used in this article Bright is writing to an audience with intermediate to professional experience within the field of law, and a willingness to adopt a new idea on the constitutionality behind the death penalty.