To Die or Not To Die

To Die or Not To Die:

A Series on the Death Penalty

An analysis of the Death Penalty

Raymond O Goss

UA Little Rock

The validity or lack there of the following argument on the death penalty:

First page: Thesis Statement/Rhetorical Situation

Second page: Use of Logos(Logic)

Third page: Use of Logos/Pathos(Emotion)

Fourth page: Use of Pathos

Fifth page: Pathos/Conclusion

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Thesis/Rhetorical Situation

The Author of The Case Against the Death Penalty, is Dr. Hugo Adam Bedau. The

purpose of this argument is to allow a wide audience, audience being the United States, to

understand why the Death Penalty is crude and should be abolished. The situation, or situations

rather, leading to this argument are as follows; Families of Murder Victims opposed to Capital

Punishment(Death Penalty), Cost, Civil Liberties, Constitutional Rights, Crime Control, Racial

Bias, and Failure of Safeguards.

There are two methods of persuasion in this argument. They include logos, and pathos.

The base thesis of this argument is that the death penalty is wrong due to ethics, cost, and civil

liberties. These reasons are stated randomly throughout the article which leads me to believe that

there are problems with the effectiveness and validity of the argument. There does not seem to be

any clear transition between topics.

The argument seems to have a scattered organization of the facts or lack thereof when it

comes to proof. The argument is effective in a sense of pathos and ethos. However, when it

comes to a logical standpoint the argument seems to take a drastic turn in the sense of, this is

why this is being said, here is the proof. The article uses several court cases as well as a few

statistics, but the effectiveness of these proofs is slightly diminished because they are not

organized properly.

To Die or Not To Die

Logos

The American Civil Liberties Union believes the death penalty inherently violates the

constitutional ban against cruel and unusual punishment and the guarantees of due process of
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law and of equal protection under the law. This seems to be a weak example of logos. This is

the first statement in the article, it provides no reference to this ban. It simply states it as if it

should be common knowledge. This does not allow your average voting citizen to determine a

proper constitutional view on the subject of capital punishment. Likewise, what constitutes equal

protection after a sentence has been reached? That is a question that, if answered in the article,

would provide a strong opening statement.

The death penalty system in the US is applied in an unfair and unjust manner against

people, largely dependent on how much money they have, the skill of their attorneys, race of the

victim and where the crime took place. People of color are far more likely to be executed than

white people, especially if the victim is white. While this may be true even in today's modern

society, where are the facts to back up this extreme claim? How can a person who has a base

education know the statistics for these statements? To validate these statements to facts, they

must first be presented alongside verified data. If it is not, the audience will simply have the

word of the author. This, again is an example of weak logos. Simple facts can be completely

unraveled into opinion by the simple lack of data that, if true, should be simple to acquire.

In 1972, the Supreme Court declared that under then-existing laws "the imposition and

carrying out of the death penalty constitutes cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the

Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments." (Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238). In 1976, the

Supreme Court moved away from abolition, holding that "the punishment of death does not

invariably violate the Constitution." The Court ruled that the new death penalty statutes

contained "objective standards to guide, regularize, and make rationally reviewable the process

for imposing the sentence of death." (Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153). In these two quotes
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from the article, apt and informative data is given that is easily looked up through many sources

of media. The data that is provided that supports the following text, Subsequently 38 state

legislatures and the Federal government enacted death penalty statutes patterned after those the

Court upheld in Gregg. Congress also enacted and expanded federal death penalty statutes for

peacetime espionage by military personnel and for a vast range of categories of murder. The

above quotes provide data for the above statement. This provides a strong validity for the

average person to understand regardless of education, race, and age. This is a strong example of

logos.

Pathos

Opposing the death penalty does not indicate a lack of sympathy for murder victims.

On the contrary, murder demonstrates a lack of respect for human life. Because life is precious

and death irrevocable, murder is abhorrent, and a policy of state-authorized killings is immoral.

It epitomizes the tragic inefficacy and brutality of violence, rather than reason, as the solution to

difficult social problems. The first statement has the ability to elicit a strong emotional

response in that it personifies a heinous act with the word sympathy, being lack thereof. The

statement is validated by stating that life is precious, however, the argument can be made that the

life that was taken was precious as well. The defense for not using capital punishment uses the

same reasoning for why murder is wrong. These statements could be construed as conflicting and

confusing. In the end it is a matter of ethics. This is a good example of the logical side of pathos,

or rather the conflict between right and wrong through logic.

A society that respects life does not deliberately kill human beings. This is another

statement that ties logic to emotion. Here is the rest of the statement to elaborate further, An

execution is a violent public spectacle of official homicide, and one that endorses killing to solve
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social problems the worst possible example to set for the citizenry, and especially children.

The logical side of the above statement is that by using the death penalty we as a society are

advocating public/official homicide. The pathological or emotional side of the statement would

be the example we are setting for children. The American society highly values its children.

Most of the time children are considered the most important in America. We as Americans try to

influence our children in the best ways possible. Using children to argue against the death

penalty is a smart choice when one is trying to elicit an emotional response.

Unlike any other criminal punishments, the death penalty is irrevocable. This could

possibly provoke the strongest form of emotion, guilt. If a person is innocent and this is not

found out until after the person is killed then it is too late. There is no undoing the action. The

person has been wrongly executed. I shall ask for the abolition of the punishment of death until

I have the infallibility of human judgment demonstrated to me." Although some proponents of

capital punishment would argue that its merits are worth the occasional execution of innocent

people, most would hasten to insist that there is little likelihood of the innocent being executed.

Guilt is hard to live with when the situation is small. Imagine being the cause of an innocent

person's death. Guilt is one of, if not the strongest emotion as well as one of the most painful and

crippling. Therefore, this is an excellent use of pathos, probably the strongest in the entire article.

Conclusion

In this article, many things were covered. The argument was strong in some place and

weak in others. The question of civil liberties, race, poverty, guilt, commerce, etc. have been

brought up throughout the argument. While the death penalty is a controversial issue, it is hard to

stay unbiased in my analysis of the argument.

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One of the issues about the article is that the information is a bit outdated. The original

argument was written in 1972 by Dr. Bedau. It was then later revised in 2012 which is still five

years in the past. Social and civil liberty laws have since changed.

The logical aspects of this article were easy to touch on. This was just a matter of looking

for the appropriate data. When the data was present and relevant then the statements seemed to

be stronger. When the data was absent or lacking the argument seemed to disintegrate due to the

lack of support. Facts that are without proof can easily be viewed as opinion.

The pathological/emotional side of the paper was difficult to discuss due to my own

personal views. I had to set aside my bias that I have had for many years in order to objectively

discuss the solidity of the argument. There were many strong points that combined. The

argument as a whole is solid with a few tweaks and data needed throughout the article.

I believe this to be a very strong opinion piece on the ethics of the death penalty. logic

and emotion throughout the argument making it difficult to refute or identify as weak.