The Death Penalty In No Choirboy By Susan Kuklin

Today, there are only three different countries一Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Iran, who sentence the death penalty to people that have yet to turn eighteen. Before the Supreme Court’s 2005 decision in Roper v. Simmons, the United States used to be on that list. After the Supreme Court’s decision, anyone who was on death row for crimes that they had committed prior to turning eighteen were put off death row. Instead, they were sentenced to life without parole. No Choirboy written by Susan Kuklin, looks into five different stories of people who were affected by the death penalty in the United States prior to the Supreme Court’s 2005 decision. In one of her most popular books, Kuklin interviews three men who were sentenced to death before the age of …show more content…
Mark Melvin was only fourteen when he was sentenced to death. In his case, the prosecutor asked the court to try him as an adult which can sometimes occur. Melvin was only fourteen when he killed a man. The people involved in the murder were Melvin and his brother, a former correctional officer. His brother was involved in stealing farm equipment and selling it to the deputy sheriff’s father and mother and Melvin joined him. Once the people that they were dealing with caught them, and his brother said that the only way to keep them from going to prison was to kill them, so that’s exactly what happened. Melvin killed the man outside while his brother killed the women inside the house. What Melvin did not know was that the man and his wife were only going to testify against his brother, and not him due to his age. When Melvin talked about his childhood, he mentions that he was never a good kid. With his father figure out of the picture he had a rough childhood. It was in county jail where Melvin found out that he was being tried as an adult. Mark did not go to trial, instead he plea bargained for life-and-ten sentence which is essentially life without parole. Melvin went from Donaldson State Prison, a level six, high security, to Holman Correctional Facility, a level-five prison.. He describes Holman as a scary place since that’s where they have the electric chair. Holman …show more content…
Going into reading the book, I thought I had an idea of how everything worked. No Choirboy expanded my knowledge not just about the death penalty, but on how harsh life can be in prison. I really enjoyed how Kuklin set up the book. I don’t think that there is a better way to tell different stories than the way she did. She split her book into six chapters, each of them tells a different story. She did not only focus on people that were on the death penalty. She also focused on their families and a victim’s family. I really liked that she interviewed a variety of people because it makes everything feel more real. I think that adding a victim’s family to her list was a smart idea. It lets us see how they feel not only towards their loss, but also towards the prisoner. I really enjoyed her first three stories. They evoke so much anger and in a way happiness. They let you see how the prisoners feel and how their views of life have changed throughout their years in prison. They learn so many things while they’re in there. It made me happy how some of them, even though they were going to face death, they were able to find things that kept them happy. For one it was to draw while the other one was to read. I don’t think that she was missing content; she hit every topic with the right amount of