Michael Rea March 22, 2011 Koch vs. Bruck "Is capital punishment an adequate and necessary form of payback for the crime of murder? And will it prevent the occurrence of future murders? These are the vital issues argued by Edward I. Koch in his article, "The Death Penalty is Justice," and David Bruck's "No Death Penalty." In my opinion, Koch is able to ideally show the need for capital punishment, while Bruck is ineffective at justifying his stance that the death penalty is an unsuitable punishment for the crime of murder." In "Death and Justice: How Capital Punishment Affirms Life", readers view the opinions toward the death penalty in today's world.
Currently, there are three partial defenses, diminished responsibility, provocation, and killing in pursuance of a suicide pact, for murder created under the Homicide Ordinance. If any one of the three defenses can be successfully pleaded, the accused can reduce his charge from murder to voluntary manslaughter. It is important to have a clear dividing line between murder and manslaughter because they have very different sentencing structure. While person convicted of murder will receive a mandatory life sentencing, a person found liable for manslaughter will receive a punishment of imprisonment up to life and imposed fines at the court’s discretion.
A Loss of Perspective: An Analysis of “Sex and Death and the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals.” In the essay, “Sex Death and the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals”, the writer, Carol Cohn, discusses her observations of the effects of language choice on thoughts and actions regarding the dangerous world of nuclear defense. The text explores the use of abstract language to mask the horrible consequences of nuclear war. While Cohn begins her essay by analyzing examples of this language of nuclear combat, she quickly becomes immersed in the world of defense jargon and losses the focus of the essay. The main rhetorical aim of this essay is unclear and shifts as the thesis of the essay changes. The use of ethos persuasion is observed extensively in the first half of the essay.
However, if a doctor or another individual assists in the suicide, it is then considered murder. Doctors are supposed to save lives, not take them. Society does not find that ending one’s life, whether personally or assisted, is acceptable. Doctor assisted suicide is one of the top most controversial issues in America (Ertlet, 2011). Dr. Jack Kevorkian was one of the most well-known physician-assisted suicide supporters in America.
He explains that the death penalty is just an act of torture and is too horrible to be used by our civilized society, stating that it is “torture until death” (220). He goes on to argue that the death penalty is unjust in its practice because it is applied in arbitrary and also in discriminatory ways. Quoting, “Remain grants that the death penalty is a just punishment for some murderers, but he thinks that justice does not require the death penalty for murderers” (221). He goes on to say that life imprisonment can be an alternative decision that stratifies the requirements of the justice
Durkheim is one of the founding fathers of sociology, and when he came up with the claim that suicide is a mere social action rather than a pathological one, a lot of controversy was caused. A topic which had previously been seen as personal and individual was due to be studied as a social phenomenon. This essay will focus upon the work of Durkheim alongside critiquing it using other sociologists who have studied suicide since then. The first thing which must be established in this essay is the sociological definition of suicide: "Suicide is applied to every case of death which results directly or indirectly from a positive or negative act, carried out by the victim oneself knowing it will produce this result" This definition was coined after the initial definition failed to differentiate between two types of people whom commit suicide: those whom are in an unknowing state, either from use of drugs or other factors which affect knowledge, and are unaware of the consequences of their actions. The second type of person is one whom is in full knowledge of the impact of their actions and continue to pursue in that act.
Reading Portfolio: Personal Response “Assisted suicide: A right or a wrong?” Even as I read about this controversial issue about euthanasia, it saddens me that people would want to argue whether it should be legal to choose to end their lives. But of course, they have their reasons too. Supporters of the legalization of euthanasia reason mainly on the basis that every person should have the freedom of choice to do whatever he wants with his body life, which includes controlling his own death and being given the right to maximum happiness that he can get. I think the arguments for euthanasia have a point; imagine and put yourself in the shoes of a terminally and critically ill person that suffers excruciating pain 24 hours a day, 7 days
| Assisted Suicide | [Type the document subtitle] | | This paper will discuss my article findings dealing with assisted suicide | | Jessica Hairston | 11/10/2011 | | Assisted suicide has always been a highly debated ethical issue that many are confused about and don’t know what it is really about. Assisted suicide is stated to be “physician-assisted suicide (dying) , doctor-assisted dying (suicide), and more loosely termed mercy killing, basically means to take a deliberate action with the express intention of ending a life to relieve intractable (persistent, unstoppable) suffering. Some interpret euthanasia as the practice of ending a life in a painless manner. Many disagree with this interpretation, because it needs
It is perceived by a perpetrator as a form of psychological survival in a death-dominated environment; in other words, there is a paradox of a “killing self” being created on behalf of what one perceives as one’s own means of survival. Doubling involves both an unconscious dimension — taking place, as stated, largely outside of awareness — and a significant change in moral consciousness. An individual would need this new part of himself to function psychologically in an environment so antithetical to his previous ethical standards yet the same time, he would need his prior self in order to continue to see himself as human; a friend, a husband, a father, a son. But the second self can become dangerously unrestrained, as it so often does in perpetrators. When it becomes so, that opposing self can become the usurper from within and replace the original self until it “speaks” for the entire person.
He asks if it is “Nobler to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” – life – passively, and simply endure the pain, or to be active in your protests and end your own life. He then proceeds to compare death to sleeping, and contemplates the end of suffering and questions that it might bring to him, or as he put it: “the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to”. It is at this point that he decides that suicide would be the desirable course of action, but then realizes that there is more to the question, such as, what will happen in the afterlife.