"Capital Punishment"-- A Student's Draft

The following draft was written in response to an assignment that required students to construct an argument in "academic style." The student follows the ENGL 104 instructor's required format, writing her draft in the following sections:

Based on what you've learned about cultural rhetorics--especially African American Vernacular English-- consider what you would do to help this student revise.  For each section:
  1. What encouragement would you offer her?
  2. What would you identify as the improvements she could make?
  3. How would you phrase your comments?


Capital Punishment

[INTRO & STATEMENT]    According to the United States constitution, the Bill of Rights states that all men should have the right to life, and the pursuit of happiness.  We as United States citizens have been faced with a problem that leans in favor for victims but unfortunately kills many innocent men and women every year.  We have come face to face with the term capital punishment.  In my eyes Capital punishment is the act as humans playing God.   It allows a jury or a judge to decide the value of a human life and choose whether or not the penitentiary would be the proper punishment to fit the crime.  Many states uphold the death penalty.  According to Stat House on Capital punishment, “thirty-eight of the fifty states allow the death penalty in law, the death penalty is also allowed under the U.S. federal military and civilian law.

[DIVISION]    I argue against capital punishment.  In my research paper I will explain the three part series of how death row tactics are unlawful, secondly I will explain the incompetence of representation for capital punishment cases while elaborating on how the death penalty goes against the wishes of God.

[CONFIRMATION]    I will explain the first of the three part series.  Tommy Dye was labeled a “menace to society” by his parole officer and “a pathological liar… and not worthy of the court’s trust” by a federal prosecutor.  Most of the allegations that were said about Dye were true.  Almost every word that came out of his mouth was not the truth.  Dye sold drugs and and lied about his name every time he was arrested.  He proved himself to be a man of pure and unjust negativity.  It was proven that Dye was found lying under oath to a judge and a grand jury.  Dye told lies about where he graduated and how he graduated.  In 1993 Dye testified in a murder case for Steve Manning.  Manning was a bad Chicago police officer.  The courts were trying to give Manning the death sentence.  Dye testified that Manning confessed to him the murder of a suburban trucking firm owner.  The FBI used Dye as a jailhouse snitch or informant.  They taped a recording wire to his body to try and get the confession on tape.  Unfortunately there were no murder confessions on tape.  The words of Manning were interrupted by two-second gaps in the recordings and some of Dye’s movements were covering the mic on the wire so some of the confession as silenced.  Dye’s 14-year sentence was dropped to six years and he and his girl friend was placed in the witness prosecution program and all other charges were dropped.  Mr. Dye proved himself to be a witness that was not reliable but yet in still he was put on the stand to ruin a capital case and help end another person’s life.

According to Chicago Tribune “The use of such carries considerable costs in death untrustworthy witnesses penalty cases and not only by under minding the foundation of cases where the stakes are the highest.  The misuse of informants also adds financial costs to tax payers when convictions based on their testimony are retired or exonerated defendants receive court settlements.  Even prosecutors acknowledge that jailhouse informants are among the least 46 inmates have been sent to Death row in cases where prosecutors used a jail house informant.  {According to a tribune investigation that examined the 285 death-penalty cases since capital punishment was reinstated in 1977.} In about half of those 46 cases, the informant played a significant role in the conviction.  Often prosecutors put jailhouse informants witness stand in cases where the evidence of guilt was flimsy or during sentences to demonize a defendant with inflammatory accounts of crime.

A snitch would lie to any judge or lie about any person to save his or her own freedom.  They cannot speakwhat is true because their life depends on the out come.  According to Chicago tribune “Snitch testimony helped convict or condemn 4 of the 12 Illinois Death Row inmates who were later exonerated.  In two other cases prosecutors had jailhouse informants testimony ready but did not use it.  Little to lose, much to gain.”  Jailhouse informants are put on the stand to save themselves not to help the victims.

The second series talks about torture and how the FBI and police departments use this tactic for confessions.  The Chicago police department arrested Stanley Howard.  After forty-three hours of interrogation and seven pages of questions he confessed.  Howard confessed to the murder of a 42 year old man.  Later that day Howard claimed that he was torched by some of the policemen.  He claimed they kicked. Punched, and placed a plastic typewriter cover over his head.  Even though Howard showed the courts medical records of his beatings a Cook County judge refused to throw out his confession. In 1987 a jury convicted Howard and sentenced him to die.  Several years later an investigator for the Chicago Department Office of Professional Standards announced that the allegations that Howard claimed against the Chicago Police were true.  He stated that the beats did indeed occur.  Howard is still on the death row for murder.  According to Chicago Investigation “Howard is only one of ten Death Row inmates put there through the work of one of the state’s most discredited groups of police officers—former Burnside Area Commander Jon Burge regime: that detectives, from the late 1970’s to the late 1980’s beat suspects, shocked them with electric wires and put guns to their heads or in their mouths in an effort to get confessions”.  It is said that the best evidence to a murder trial is a confession, but the courts cannot uphold a confession when it is forced.  Men are being put to death because of fright and tortures.  How many more innocent men and women have to be put to death before Americans open their eyes and realize that the courts way of justice should not be death because hey cannot even be 100% sure that the person that they are trying is guilty.  According to Death of Innocent “since 1970 seventy-four people have been released from death row based on evidence of their actual innocence”.  When will enough be enough, when hundreds of innocent men have sat, rotted, and died on death row?

In addition, Aaron Patterson a gang leader who was charged and convicted for a 1986 double murder also claimed that the police torture him by trying to suffocate him with a plastic type writer cover.  Patterson used a paper clip to scratch a message into a bench in the police station.  The message read Aaron lied.  According to Patterson “ the police threaten me with violence, slapped and suffocated me with plastic, and signed a false statement to murders”.  More supporting evidence for Patterson was heard when a witness Marva Hall told the Tribune that the police and attorneys made her tell a story that was not true in order to frame Patterson.  They threatened to put Mrs. Hall in jail if she did not corporate.

The last series talked about faulty evidence.  For many months the truth about the murder of 10-year-old Amy Schultz was buried and lost.  They police had no clues or suspects for the murder of Amy.  Suddenly out of the blue two hairs were found on Amy’s body.  The next day Kenneth Knight, the scientist that examined the two hairs Testified under oath that microscopic examinations proved that the hairs “could have” come from Cecil Sutherland or someone else.  He could not say how many people the hairs could of come from.  The jury found Sutherland guilty and sentenced him to death row.  If Mr. Knight stated in court under oath that the hairs could have been from Sutherland, he never said that he was positive that the hair was Sutherland’s.  That evidence should have been thrown out of court immediately, but it was not.

According to a Tribune investigation “In some death penalty cases hair evidence has been especially crucial because the prosecution’s other evidence consisted of nothing more than a jailhouse informant or accomplice testimony, two types of evidence that often prove unreliable. But over the last decade or so, hair composition evidence has been exposed as notoriously untrustworthy.  Some courts outside Illinois have begun restricting or even forbidding its use, saying that visual hair compositions are scientifically suspect and have little value as proof.  Noting that hair evidence often is abused and mischaracterized by prosecutors, some judges and legal scholars across the country have begun criticizing it as “junk science” pseudo-science” and even “ignorance masquerading as science”.  The use and abuse of hair analysis is one more way prosecutors have shored up weak cases in Illinois, diluting the credibility of the death-penalty system.  The results can be wrongful convictions and costly court settlements paid to exonerated inmates”.

Death by a hair leads to death by the chair of the innocent men who life cannot be shared.

Now that I have explained the three series I will try and explain how the incompetence of lawyers who handle death-penalty cases are a downfall for most defendants.  Charged with arson and the death of four children who died in the fire, three of those four children belong to the defendant.  Bernon Howery needed and pleaded for a lawyer.  Earl Washington, a veteran Chicago attorney, represented him.  Howey hired him for $8,000 because he represented a relative of his.  Washington never investigated alternative suspects.  According to Washington “I trust the police to do that”.  Records show that Washington was always late for trial and sometimes he never showed up.  Washington chose to have a judge and not a jury in order to save time and money according to another lawyer’s sworn testimony.  Howery was convicted and sentencing began a week after conviction.  Washington had been approached by one of Howery’s  fellow County Board members who volunteered to testify on Howery’s behalf but Washington did not acknowledge him.  Instead, he arrived to court a half-hour late, presented three witnesses and made sure their testimony lasted a few minutes.  Mr. Washington was so incompetent as a lawyer handling Howery’s case that even Judge Burns noticed.  “Ever since you were found guilty I have been hoping, praying that there would be some evidence… that would allow the court not to impose the death penalty,” Judge Patrick Burns exclaimed to the courts.  Burns had “almost begged” Washington for more, more everything, more evidence, and Commitment to this case.  Howery was sentenced to death by lethal injection.  There is no one that a death penalty defendant could depend on if they cannot depend on their lawyers.  I am speaking about putting their lives in the hands of a perfect stranger.  They will never be sure if their representation will represent them effectively.  According to Tribune investigation “When attorneys cannot provide a strong defense, the credibility of a death sentence suffers and the chances that innocent defendants will be convicted grow.  Ineffective defense work also can lead to reversals on appeal, requiring tax payers to finance the considerable cost of a second trial or sentencing hearing”.

In addition, Capital punishment goes against God’s wishing in different ways.  According to the Holy Bible, Exodus 20:14 the bibles states in Ten Commandments that thou shall not kill.   When God spoke the Ten Commandments to the children of Israel he had no exceptions.  He was well aware of the future a how situations were going to turn about.  God was not saying it was okay for the supreme courts to take lives because they had the power, or since they were in the spotlight of the media. God never stated in the bible, if anyone commits a crime, humans might decide that jail is not enough only then it is okay for humans to take a life I created.  God is the only judge that should decide when to take a human life because he died that we may have life, he breaths the air into our lungs because according to God we are all his children no matter what sins we may commit God still loves us because he died for our sins.  According to “In the image of God”, our lord does not seek the death of any man, but has instead ordered all of creation to save men from his terrible state. As Jesus tried to explain to the Pharisee Nicodemis, “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life (49)”.  God is a forgiving God and he loves us more than we love ourselves.

[REFUTATION]    In contrast with the Diverse opinions on Capital Punishment One might say some people deserve to die.  Serial killers and baby murders and people who like to kill in extremely painful inhumane ways.  Maybe guys like Hitler, Jeffery Domer, and John Wayne Gaysey, those were men who did not deserve the gift of life.

Someone might even go so far and say that the death penalty helps to keep the balance in the prison, because jails are over crowed we need all the extra space that we can get.

According to God all sins are one sin and there is no sin that is greater than another.  When people commit sins that we think are only little sins they are actually a sin.  All sins are at a set level and killing someone is the same as talking back to your parents, or e.t.c.  So if all sins are exact no one has the right to judge.  The bible also states that no man shall judge another man.  We all have sinned and made mistakes that is why erasers come with pencils, and with pens a side of white out.  God gives life and he takes it away, and therefore he will let us know when our world has begun to over crowd.  If Americans do not stop the death penalty, then we live in a world that will not care about life and when we do not care about life our world will not survive.

[CONCLUSION]     In conclusion, the true punishment for a gruesome crime is the punishment from God.  If one does not come correct with God before death, then all hopes for forgiveness of his sins are far late than ever.  But anyone can be saved starting from the sneaky rapist, to the prejudice killers, and the conscienceless killers.  According to the Holy Bible Mark 10:26-27, and they were exceedingly astonished, and said to him, “then who can be saved?  Jesus looked at them and said to him, with men it is impossible, but not with God; for all things are possible with God”.  This scripture has helped me understand that anyone can be saved and there are no limitations on what God can do because he is a might God.  When a person is innocent and the courts do not believe, the defendant does not stand.  When their life is at stake and the people who can help them do not, inmates cannot free themselves.  When the police has beat out the confessions no one should take them seriously.  These are statements that Americans needs to ask them selves.  We need to wake up and try to put an end to death row.   When this issue reaches close to home maybe that is when we will stand up and voice our opinions to stop capital punishment.  I have explained that lawyers do not help.  Policemen tend to brutalize, and judges say they have to follow the law.  DNA is inconclusive while evidence is being tampered with.  Since capital punish is full of flaws we should speak to have it stopped for good.

Innocent

Now that I have been sentenced to death I do not know what to do.
I have been on death row for years, boy if you only knew.
I did not commit the crime, but I am sure serving the time.