Capital Punishment In Dead Man Walking By Sister Helen Prejean

One example of the closure that is provided can be seen with a victim of Boston Marathon Bombing, Adrianne Haslet-Davis. In a quote for Time magazine, Adrianne expressed her feelings on the situation. “Many in the survivor community feel like the death penalty offers a sense of justice being done. And that’s what his sentence felt like to me” (Cushing, Renny and Adrianne Haslet-Davis). After the perpetrator was sentenced to death for his actions, Haslet-Davis was able to leave the courtroom feeling satisfied, knowing that the man who had caused her and so many others harm would finally get the justice he deserved. Even more evidence of the justice and closure families of the victims can be seen through the results of a recent study. According to the recent study, over 50% of the families of victims felt fulfilled once the person accused of committing that crime was sentenced to death. (Do families of victims feel justice with the death penalty). The family of a murder victim would most likely not be satisfied if the suspected killer was able to keep his life after taking someone else’s. Knowing that the killer would pay the price for his actions with his life would be a rewarding feeling. The fact that the death penalty provides justice and closure for the families of the victims and the victims themselves is yet

The “Does the death penalty bring closure to a victim’s family?” article shares how this family believes that the death penalty does not necessarily bring closure, but it brought relief. I feel that providing two different perspectives will cause the audience to be open to my findings and have questions that I will later address in the paper. At the end of the introduction, I will share my ethos on the topic. While I do not have a lot of ethos I can share that I, like the readers, want to understand the topic more as I am now a tax payer and if the U.S. should still use this form of

"STUDIES: Death Penalty Adversely Affects Families Of Victims And Defendants | Death Penalty Information Center". Deathpenaltyinfo.org. N.p., 2017.

The use of the death penalty has been known to help to give closure to the families of the victim and the killer to help ease their

“Enjoy life today, yesterday is gone and tomorrow may never come,” said an unknown author. The death penalty faces many pros and cons as to why it should be legal and illegal. Capital punishment is another name for the death penalty. So many people are clueless as to what the death penalty even is or what it does. The death penalty is the punishment of execution, administered to someone legally convicted of a capital crime. Crimes to be punished by death differs from every state and country. Usually the death penalty comes to action when the capital crime is murder or rape; capital offense usually means bail will not be an option. Even though the death penalty gives closure to the victim’s families who have suffered so much, the death penalty

In “The Death Penalty is a Step Back” is a written essay by Coretta Scott King, argues that the death penalty is unethical and illegitimate. In doing so, she develops this strong statement by, first, establishing her moral right to make this statement and to promote a non-violence over the death penalty.

The system works that the criminal does the crime, the criminal gets caught, tried and convicted, and it is understood that the punishment will be severe. The person the criminal has killed no longer has a part to play in this. Unfortunately the murderer has deprived their family and friends of a loved one. Their grief begins with the murder. “It may not end with the murderer’s execution, but the execution does engender a feeling of relief at no longer having to think about the ordeal- a feeling which often fails to arise while the murder still lives on” (The Facts). the system in place currently is there for the purpose of granting justice, cannot do so for the surviving victims, unless the murderer himself is put to death (The Facts).

Dead Man Walking was an autobiography written by Sister Helen Prejean. The novel tells about Prejean's life in dealing with her intimate journey through her dealings with capital punishment. Prejean was a Roman Catholic nun that worked in St. Thomas. She worked in a New Orleans housing project for black residents. In January of 1982, Prejean was asked to be a pen pal with a death row inmate named Pat Sonnier. Prejean accepted because she believed that the work seemed to fit with what she was doing at the time. Prejean wrote to Sonnier, believing that she would not be written back. Sonnier, convicted of the brutal murder of two highschool students at a local football game, surprisingly

Unquestionably, the article It Hurts So Bad: Comparing Grieving Patterns of the Families of Murder Victims With Those of Families of Death Row Inmates by Kate King discusses experiences of murder victims and comparing them to families of death row inmates. Admittedly, King states “Although capital punishment has been a topic of scholarly research and popular debate, an examination of the literature on this topic reveals that the human impact of the death penalty has received little attention” (King, 2004). Furthermore, some of the research conducted is to better understand the experiences of grief and social problems when dealing with families of the murder and death row inmates. According to this article, It Hurts So Bad: Comparing Grieving

Humans on death row die a thousand times before their actual death. With death near, Sister Helen Prejean’s presence is crucial to Patrick and others. There are a mass amount of moral issues involved with the death penalty. Death drives humans to see life in a different way and gives them the opportunity to reach out to God and achieve comfort in

I believe that the movie Dead Man Walking impacted my life greatly. It was a very emotional and moving movie. This was an excellent movie because it portrayed the feelings of both the families of the victims and the murder himself. It shows how much pain and suffering the families had to go through with all the sadness and hatred against Matthew Poncelant. The movie also showed how that the families' hatred did not go away after Matthew was executed. The greatest emotional part of the movie was when Matthew confessed that he did kill the teenagers and that he was truly sorry. From there, he was able to at least die with dignity and also he asked the parents of the teenagers for their forgiveness for him. This movie also showed how the

The case for capital punishment can best be understood by examining the opposition's arguments against capital punishment. Opponents of capital punishment say the death penalty does not deter crime and is cruel and unusual. Opponents may also argue that capital punishment is a blood thirsty judicial homicide that benefits no one. Are they right to believe a murderer is entitled to our sympathy?

Last but not least, from a sociologic perspective, capital punishment does not work as intended, to deter crime rate, rather, it might brutalize individuals, at the same time does nothing good to the victim’s family other than brutal vengeance. The origin of death penalty is served as a vehicle to put a warning for those potential future criminals that such kind of behavior will lead to death. However, so far, no clear evidence can be seen that capital punishment, as a mechanism of deterrent, actually cut down the local crime rate. Ironically, a reversal trend was found by Death Penalty Information Center (2010) in the USA that the death penalty leads to an increase in local murder rate. To die might be too easy for the mindless murderers. Also, for the relatives or friends of criminals put into death through capital punishment, they are more likely to be

While some families wish for the death penalty, others wish for them to remain in prison to rot. Meanwhile, the expectations of the execution prevent closure. On the United States, for example the current duration of stay on death row prior to executions is sixteen years. Just like the convicted person on death row and their families, victims seeking revenge are affected by cycles of hop and frustration if the execution is postponed. While the other side is hoping for life, the other side is hoping for death. For many victims seeking revenge, the retention of the possibility of the death penalty is like passing to a thirsty man a glass of salty water.

Dead Man Walking by Sister Helen Prejean is a bestselling novel based upon the death sentence of Patrick Sonnier and his brother Eddie. It is a very suspenseful and heart-wrenching novel on the topic of capital punishment, and allows for an “eyewitness account” to see the true horrors and injustice of the American justice system. The novel itself is very descriptive in the settings and the various methods of punishment used at that time, and provides a very negative bias towards punishment. It is a sole contradiction to the 8th amendment, and a very well-thought and planned one at that. In fact, it is fit to be the novel that sparked the national debate. Prejean allows the use of her personal experiences, no matter how gruesome or vulgar, to