Comparing Barbara Huttmann's 'Crime of Compassion' and Martin Gansberg's Article about the Murder of Kitty Genovese

It was a time in the city’s history to get the perpetrators of the crime committed and to be recognized as solving the greatest crime of time. Media and public presence played a huge role in pressuring law enforcement to figure out this awful incident. The demand from the public was pushing from all sides of this story to get answers.

Pamela Colloff’s “The Innocent Man,” is an eye-opening, gut-wrenching essay in which Colloff beautifully takes a high complexity prejudiced case of a guilty murder verdict and successfully brings to light her inspiring character Michael Morton’s true innocence in a flawed justice system. Suspense, sadness and frustration are effectively provoked from the reader about Michael’s tragic nightmare which persists for over two decades of time. A nightmare which begins when Michael returns home from work on August 13, 1986, to find out his dead wife was beaten to death in their bed. This is only the beginning of what Colloff unfolds in her writing of Michael’s twenty-five-year agonizing battle behind bars. Step by step Colloff’s marvelous writing

On March 13th, 1964, in New York, a young woman by the name of Catherine “Kitty” Genovese was just coming home from her late shift at work. It’s three a.m., and as she’s walking to her apartment building, she notices a suspicious, hooded man some distance away. Rightfully concerned, she goes to the phone booth, aiming to call the police, but never makes it in time. She’s stabbed in the back, and then in her gut. When her screams cause the neighbors to turn the lights on, all they do

Barbara Huttman’s “A Crime of Compassion” has many warrants yet the thesis is not qualified. This is a story that explains the struggles of being a nurse and having to make split-second decisions, whether they are right or wrong. Barbara was a nurse who was taking care of a cancer patient named Mac. Mac had wasted away to a 60-pound skeleton (95). When he walked into the hospital, he was a macho police officer who believed he could single-handedly protect the whole city (95). His condition worsened every day until it got so bad that he had to be resuscitated two or three times a day. Barbara eventually gave into his wishes to be let go. Do you believe we should have the right to

In the early morning hours of March 13, 1964, twenty-eight year old barmaid Catherine "Kitty" Genovese was murdered and raped on the street in Kew Gardens, New York. The incident did not initially receive much attention until Martin Gansberg's infamous article, "Thirty-Eight Who Saw Murder, Didn't Call the Police", was published in the New York Times two weeks later. In reality, only twelve people witnessed the event yet each did nothing to significantly help Genovese until it was too late. The Genovese murder has become the definitive example of the "bystander effect", the social phenomenon in which individuals are less likely to help someone in distress if there are other people present. The bystander effect occurs wherever there is

Are there any acceptable reasons for letting someone die in front of your eyes? In the article “The Murder They Heard” written by Stanley Milgram and Paul Hollander and first appearing in The Nation, Milgram and Hollander explored the reasons for the neighbors’ failure to help, their lack of civic sense and their actions toward Catherine Genovese’s murder, in part, they are responding to the hype created around Martin Gansberg’s “38 Who Saw Murder Didn’t Call the Police.” Milgram and Hollander argued that the witnesses were not at fault in that murder and instead, they blamed the city life, society norms, law, and the situational pressure. Even though Milgram and Hollander stated some acceptable reasons to think that the witnesses were not guilty, I still find the witnesses’ responsible for the loss of Genovese’s life.

Six days later, police arrested Winston Moseley, a 29-year-old machine operator. In addition to being convicted of Murder of Catherine Genovese, Moseley also admitted to killing two other women in the past year during his investigation. Law enforcement was unsure to hold the eyewitnesses responsible for failure to report the crime that resulted in the murder. After investigations with witnesses most admitted they were too afraid to call, or gave other arbitrary reasons for not reporting the crime. Detectives interviewed a couple that admitted to hearing the screams and even witnessed the crimes. When asked why they didn’t contact the police the wife replied, “I don’t know” (Gansberg, 1964). Another witness told the police he overheard the screams and he didn’t report it because he was tired and went back to bed. Detectives were able to capture the suspect rather quickly, because the residents of the neighborhood were capable of providing detailed information leading to the arrest of Moseley. It was this event, that created The Genovese Syndrome, otherwise known as The bystander effect; The bystander effect refers to the phenomenon that an individual 's likelihood of helping

In the article Gansberg said there were three attacked but there were two and in fact two people called the police. Once the ambulance arrived, Kitty was in the arms of a neighbor and friend Sophia Farrar. Farrar left her apartment to be with Kitty’s side with no idea whether it was safe or not. Lemman’s article did not serve to just criticize Gansberg but also added key details of the murder and witnesses like Joseph Fink and Karl Ross. Fink who worked in the apartment building across from Kitty saw the first attack and after watching Moseley flee, took a nap. Ross who was a friend and neighbor of Kitty’s was drunk that night. He heard the first attack did not help but opened his door a crack during the second attack and saw Moseley stab Kitty. Ross than made a few phone calls one to a friend who told him to stay out of it and then crawled across the roof into a friend’s apartment where he later called the police. The Kitty Genovese case helped to push the creation of 911, in 1964 to call the police in New York you had to use a specific number of each precinct, and your call was not always answered. Kitty’s case also sparked psychologist Bibb Latane and John Darley to create a new realm of research called the bystander

Humans are conditioned to believe that murderers deserve punishments decreed by the justice system, with their days numbered, meaning to be spent in misery, as they wrongfully extinguished the lives of others. However, while murder is never acceptable, it is necessary to analyze the story, often rooted in trauma, of how a murderer came to be, which naturally can evoke compassion within the reader. Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood provides a look at a man who had a troubling childhood and adult life, ultimately arousing sympathy for Perry Smith. Perry lived through a hard childhood, and was deprived of many things every child should receive. Although Perry is portrayed as a cold hearted killer, readers can still find sympathy in their hearts for him.

Lennie Small used to travel with George Milton, and they would work on ranches and things of the sort to one day earn enough money to have their own ranch and “Live off the fat of the land.” Of course this is all sent downhill when Lennie kills Curley’s wife. Curley being the son of the boss at the ranch. He didn’t mean to kill her, but he killed her none the less and he himself was killed because he killed her. That is the topic of this paper. Killers should be killed for what they have done. Killing is killing. All murderers should receive capital punishment.

In Jane Valez-Mitchell’s Secrets can be Murder; the Killer Next Door, the journalist behind the scenes discovers what goes through the mind of all these criminals as they commit their acts. As lie after lie is told to the media as a large case is unveiling the real truth behind the stories is what is most interesting. Secrets can be Murder, goes deep into 21 different cases ranging from a mother killing all of her children to women rapped by men they weren’t expecting. They

Vigilante justice has fascinated readers for years. The idea of committing crimes for what the character believes to be a worthy cause brings up arguments about whether the character is justified in doing so. Stephen R. Lawhead’s Hood, and Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, present the reader with the same idea of characters using vigilante justice to sort out cases that can not be touched by the law. In And Then There Were None, Lawrence Wargrave acts as a judge and sets up an elaborate trap to punish people who committed crimes that the law would not be able to deal with.

Throughout history, crime literature has been one of the most popular genres to reach the masses. Ranging from last words of criminals sentenced to death to sermons about crime and religion, crime stories have presented criminals to the masses in different lights and with different opinions. Some condone their treacherous acts in favor of describing their libertine lives; others outright condemn their crimes and lifestyles. However, no matter the purpose of the writer, most crime accounts have the same effect: they make criminals likable to people.

Davis’s argues that books in the crime nonfiction writing genre are well written books, and at times even better than fictionalized crime novels because

Murder is a form of violence that does more harm than just destruction of property but leads to a loss of life in the process, and that makes it more severe than other forms of violence that may just end at injuries to people or destruction of property (Staples 2014). The sociological approach to issues of murder in the city highlights how the society or the environment increases the cases of death or reduces them in a case where there are few cases of murder and how the revelation would relatively contribute in mitigating the cases of violence (Pratt and Godsey 2003). The trend in deaths across different cities including Philadelphia is a motivation that results from how the city operations are set and are functioning, the level of security