The Worst Of The Worst By Patrick Radden Keefe Analysis

“The Worst of the Worst,” by Patrick Radden Keefe is a story told about Judy Clarke, a defense attorney who does whatever she can to save the most notorious killers’ lives. Throughout the story, Keefe demonstrated how Judy Clarke is indeed one of a kind. Clarke selects the criminals no one wants to defend, such as rapists, psychotic kidnappers, and mass murderers. In all cases but one did Clarke successfully convince the jury to spare the criminal’s life.
In one instance, the criminal kidnapped a boy and a girl who were siblings. He then raped and murdered the boy in front of the girl’s eyes, and felt awakened and determined that what he did was wrong. Clearly, the man was insane, which is why Clarke deterimined to convince the jury and judge that he does not deserve the death penalty because by law, the government must shield the criminally insane. To many people’s disbelief she one the case, and successfully proved his insanity, and he was given life imprisonment without parole.
There were several other cases such as this in which the odds were stacked against her, but she successfully found a way to save her clients’ lives. One time, she even went so far as to bring the criminal’s daughter to the witness stand. Clarke asked the young girl what she wanted …show more content…
“The death penalty continuously falls disproportionately on racial minorities.” (Frank Schmalleger) For instance, when criminals murder whites they are more likely to be sentenced to death than are those who murder blacks. The death penalty should never be influenced by arbitrary and unfair circumstances if the government were upholding it, and since we are only human that is inevitable. For example, in the case of the Boston bombing; Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, had been sentenced to death, but it may have been solely because his case was has held at the same location, Boston, as the