Critical analysis

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Critical Analysis of Death and Justice

The subject “death and justice” will be scrutinized in this critical essay. The “death and justice” writer Edward I. Koch is a controversial and outspoken anti-spending and anti-crime individual. He worked in New York as a mayor from around 1976 to 1988 (Koch 1). Working for 22years in the public service as a mayor, councilman, congressman, and district leader, he represented liberal constituencies; this offers Edward all the credits to talk about the issue. I did pick this theme for analysis for the reason death and justice has been a vital social concern that many scholars have debated for a long. The scrutiny of the essay informs the audience successfully the right viewpoint of tackling this matter amicably.

In writing, (Koch2) makes an effort to back up capital punishment as a way to make everybody cautious with law enforcement in the community. An instance is given by Koch of joseph Carl and Robert Lee’s executions after they were ascertained to have taken part in either murder or rape disputes. Prior to their killing, Carl and Robert supported that murder is wrong, immoral, and must be dealt with. (Koch 2) sees life as precious and thinks that capital penalty could assist in confirming this fact. Hence the author tries to convince the community of the advantages of the death penalty and the way it would make everyone moral and responsible.

The major issue of the writer is that life is valuable and hence must be honored by everybody. (Koch 2) annotates in the article, “life is for sure precious and I trust the death sentence assist confirm this truth.” The method in which the death sentence is being implemented contains no prejudice, discrimination, and bias because even the criminals affected have been tolerant of their wrongs and puzzling the community to stop murdering.

All through the article, the writer starts with the conflicting opinions and then forms his own counter-arguments to each key idea. This technique makes the reader recognize their inaccuracies and further convinced by him. He goes on with the enormous statistics “In USA the murder percentage elevated 122 percent between 1964 and 1981” and “at the same time, the murder percentage in New York City amplified by 400 percent”. With these community statistics, the author defines the cumulative danger around the readers with no death punishment enacted for offenses of murder. Moreover, he devotes the next paragraph revealing official figures that this reveals the degree to which the community is at risk and will be huger unless the answer for the homicide is handled radically.

I trust that the writer productively uses all three pathos, logos, and ethos to back up his argument in his article. Though the ethos method doesn’t occur much through his article, he uses it to gain and establish the credibility of the readers. Koch (1985) notes his career profile working for 22years in the public service as a validation that he is highly conversant about political matters capital punishment included. Founded on the given data, the readers develop their confidence in him, which aids him to get their approval more effortlessly.

Ethos aside, Koch forms appeals to emotion over the pathos technique so that to attract substantial readers’ sympathy. First of all, Koch stated two events of “Richard Biegenwald, aka “the Thrill killer” and Lemuel Smith as instances of offenders who re-offend numerous times. However, the first one wasn’t hanged because “there was no death punishment statute in New York,” the other one even “has efficiently been offered a license to murder. The unjust truths harbor the person who reads grievances against strict discipline scarcity for extreme wrongdoings, precisely no capital sentence also compassion for the victims mistakenly killed. Koch’s successively using the latest cases as evidence enables the readers to understand the seriousness and urgency of the matter, which raises his argument effectiveness.

The notion that “the death punishment is barbaric” (Para 5) is a weakness that Koch discloses when he verifies it is barbaric to not utilize Death and Justice Analysis by Edward Koch. The strength of that the article is that, in some way, it’s able to win the readers’ emotions on how the death sentence can be effective. The article’s audience is aimed towards individuals, who aren’t for capital punishment, persons who do not have a view on it, and for anybody else concerned about the topic. All through the text, regardless of abundance, there is some sense of (pathos). An emotional appeal Even though Koch’s main tone throughout the article is aggressive, he succeeds in appealing to emotions in certain contexts.

In conclusion, though the death sentence appears inhumane, it stands to the most operational deterrence and the reasonable justice that can be administered to serious victims of offenses like murder. It is obvious that the extra sentences utilized by many criminal justice systems are not effective at stopping offenders from engaging in the same crimes. If these methods were operative enough, recurrence criminals would be a past thing. My opinion in this is that I think death sentence is an effective way to deal with serious offenders and an effective way to terminate crime

Reference

Koch, E. I. (1997). Death and Justice. Selzer, 1997, 904-9.