Sunday, September 15, 2013

TOW #1- Article: "With Death Penalty, Let the Punishment Truly Fit the Crime" By Robert Blecker


From a young age we are taught the clichés "Let the punishment fit the crime" and also "Give a person a taste of his own medicine", however many believe that when it comes to the death penalty, nobody should ever truly deserve to die. In Robert Blecker's essay "With Death Penalty, Let the Punishment Truly Fit the Crime", he writes about a possible alternative for the death penalty to replace the current method which is lethal injection.
 Robert Blecker is a professor at New York Law School, where he teaches criminal and constitutional law; therefore he specializes in this category regarding the death penalty and has credentials in this field. This article was written on August 22, 2013, thus the context is this past summer because there has been a recent increase of “abolitionists” who are petitioning the current method of the death penalty. Due to the fact that pharmaceutical companies have stopped shipping the deadly vaccinations to criminal facilities, Blecker and abolitionists from throughout the United States have started to think of alternatives for the death penalty and hopefully make it more constitutional.  
Blecker’s purpose of the article is to create awareness of the unjust methods of the death penalty, and to give options or ideas to create a way to execute our worst criminals in a way that is not regarding medication. Blecker believes, as do many others, that medication is a way to improve a sick human body, not kill a healthy one; thus he offers options such as a firing squad, that is civil yet not through the use of medication.
 Blecker’s audience can be any American citizen, mostly because in order to change the government’s methods it will require a movement by the people, which will begin with informing the general public of why Blecker’s ideas are ones to believe. I do believe that Blecker achieved his purpose through the use of ethos because his credentials relating to the topic of the death penalty attracts the reader to his side of the argument, ultimately allowing him to achieve his purpose. 

http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/22/opinion/blecker-death-penalty/index.html

No comments:

Post a Comment