Helen Prejean

The ‘golden rule’, treat others as you want to be treated, is embedded into the minds of children starting at the earliest age of cognitive understanding. Thusly, it makes sense to treat those who have committed heinous crimes with the same amount of disregard that they have displayed. In the United States and many other countries, capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is a method of punishing these convicts. As a current controversial ‘hot topic’, there are many people who are…

The essay “Executions Should Be Televised” was written by both Zachary Shemtob and David Lat. Shemtob is a teacher at Central Connecticut State University and teaches Criminal Justice. While Lat is not a teacher or professor, he is a former federal prosecutor. Based on professions, these men have dealt with capital punishment and have some form of background knowledge of the filming concerned with executions. The essay “Executions Should Be Televised” that Shemtob and Lat co-wrote was published…

and rape, remains on death row in the county prison as he was sentenced to death for his actions. This movie’s plot takes off as Matthew befriends a local nun, Sister Helen Prejean, who works toward helping Matthew avoid his destined death. Sister Helen is unsuccessful, and as Matthew is moments away from death, he admits to Sister Helen that he raped and murdered the female victim and then murdered the male victim. The movie concludes when Matthew is lawfully put to death. While Matthew is…

In April, 1989, a woman jogging alone in New York City’s Central Park was brutally beaten, raped, and sodomized. Five teenagers, Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, and Korey Wise (also known as Kharey Wise), were convicted of the crime. They became known as the “Central Park Five”, and were convicted largely because of their false confessions. NYC Mayor Koch called it the crime of the century. The sentences of Central Park Five were vacated in 2002 after DNA…

On September 11th, 2001, the twin towers were bombed. The media played a huge part in how the attack was portrayed to the country and the rest of the world. The media, in most cases, controls and influences how violence is perceived by society. The media hints that individuals watch violent shows to numb themselves from reality. People also use these violent acts as an excuse to hate or discriminate on a particular race. These ideas of images portraying violence and sadism is illustrated in…

Morality Of The Death Penalty in The United States Death Penalty execution rates have been falling a substantial amount over the past decades. This warrants the question whether the death penalty was effective and just, in ruling or if more people are denouncing the punishment. The death penalty is morally just in the United States for capital and heinous crimes, and the majority of the public tend to agree. In the United States more than 80 percent of the population believes the death penalty…

Imagine sitting in a courtroom and being on trial for a very serious capital offense. Capital punishment, or the death penalty, is a possible sentence for this terrible crime. Watch as the public defense lawyer in charge of the case ruins any chance of a lesser punishment … because he is drunk. This is exactly what happened to Robert Hosley. According to Marc Bookman, Hosley went to trial for committing a capital offense: murdering a police officer. His public defense lawyer, Andy Prince,…

Death Penalty From the start of our nation, people have been granted the right to life, whether a person is to die or whether he is to live should not be decided by the state. We must abolish of the death penalty because people have been wrongly accused before, it has happened before and it could happen again. Picture this, what if this time a family member or loved one was wrongly sentenced to death, will you sit back and wait till that happens or will you take a stand today before it’s too…

“Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.” (J.R.R Tolkien). Like Tolkien states, even the wisest and allegedly enlightened cannot see all possibilities and reliably truth say every judgement. Each year, hundreds of people are sent to death row, judging them to be worse than animals, and therefore to be treated as such. The basis of the court system…

Violence is a terrible behavior that can plague the citizens caught in the middle of it. Violence has the power to alter how a person views society and even themselves. Violence also has the power to make citizens desensitized to the chaos going around their city. However, just as violence can be detrimental to people it can also cause citizens to realize that change needs to occur. In “Great to Watch,” the author, Maggie Nelson, discusses how society, especially Americans, have become…