How has your opinion about criminal justice and capital punishment changed?
63 thoughts on “Question 5: Changed Opinions”
I began this book with an undecided opinion on the death penalty, but with an open mind. I was prepared to learn the facts about the ‘other side’ of the argument, which argues for abolishing the death penalty. As I read further into the book, however, I noticed that Sister Prejean’s passionate rhetoric was sounding oddly familiar. Prejean condemns the prosecution in both cases she discusses in her book for using ‘insinuations’ to sway the jury toward voting for death, yet she uses the same tactics to convince the reader of her agenda. Prejean uses almost entirely connotative language, loosely relates her point to thick theological discussions of morality, and refuses to give credit to evidence that cannot prove her case. My opinion on criminal justice is still ambiguous; I am wary of both the system and its critics. Prejean’s book, while powerful and emotional, does not seem like a credible source on which to base an opinion. Her criticism’s sheer lack of credibility, in fact, solidifies my opinion that our current justice system, while having some flaws, is overall a valid and essentially sound method of enforcing justice in our country.
I would like to address this reply to Tyler’s original post. It seems to have evoked the most response not only because it was among the first, but because it rejects a perfectly credible source like Sister Prejean’s “The Death of Innocents.” I began this book being in favor of the death penalty. In short, it completely changed my opinion. While Prejean has her bias like anyone else, I feel the majority of the time she remained expository and informative giving real statistics about the dis-proportionality of death sentences given to poor over rich, and minorities over whites. Those facts I feel should weigh heavily on the minds of any reasonable person when the faced with the prospect of allowing the state to take a person’s life. While statistics don’t always mean something to the individual, circumstances certainly do. It is most plainly described as a lack of proper representation and unequal justice before the law, when poor minorities such as Dobie Williams or Joseph O’Dell become the victims of circumstance and prejudice, and are given inept lawyers for defense and biased juries by ambitious prosecutors. How can you believe capital punishment is a sound institution, when is has so many obvious inherent flaws? I now personally believe that no one should have the right to take life, not even the government, and under civil circumstances that should always be the case. Life in prison without parole is a perfectly suitable alternative to death, because it removes the individual from society and ultimately cost the state less, due to the absence of lengthy capital trials.
I would also like to address your comment concerning Prejean’s loose connection to theological discussion. Yes, I also felt it was indeed tedious and strayed somewhat from the issue. But certain elements of theology are very difficult to relate to modern life. When I began this book I was very wary of the fact that a religious figure was attempting to influence a political issue. I more than anyone, want public policy to move forward in a secular manner. However, religion plays a large role in the lives of millions of jurors as well as the lives of political leaders. For that reason alone the subject needed to be addressed. Prejean’s meticulous debate over the fine points of certain scripture indeed served its purpose when Justice Scalia attempted to justify his consent to execute numerous death row inmates with religion. Although I am personally and atheist, I feel Sister Prejean’s accomplishment with the Catholic Church was an enormous stride to end the death penalty.
In regards to the judicial process, I was shocked to find that (often times) the original police reports are not often used. To me, this makes absolutely no sense. The fact of the matter is, the human brain’s recall tends to not be 100% accurate. When there is a memory gap, one’s brain tends to fill in the gaps with what MAY have occured. The further one gets from an incident, the more likely it is for them to unknowingly give a false account of what happened. Again, why are the original police reports not used in court, a majority of the time? These reports are fresh and are the closest that anyone will come to an uncensored reporting of the facts and eyewitness accounts. This has greatly changed my view on the judicial process, due to the fact that the initial account of what occured is likely to be the most accurate, assuming that witnesses are not giving false testimony.
(I apologize that this post came as a ‘reply’. I don’t know how to create a separate response to the question)
Tyler,
I’d like to start by saying that I respect your position and your thoughts. I’d like to rebut your statement, which challenges the credibility of The Death of Innocents and Sister Prejean. She was an incredibly diligent author, making sure that any facts about cases or statistics were thoroughly researched and cited. The extensive endnotes section is a testament to that claim. Who would have more credibility than someone who experienced the situation first-hand? Of course I realize that her position represents a bias, but when it comes to a topic as serious as capital punishment, polarization is compulsory
I’d like to back up Tyler’s position with a thought of my own. Before saying anything else I will state that I hope to become a prosecutor one day, but I should hope that would not immediately make me appear to be against this book from the start. That being said, I DO believe that Sister Prejean paints not only the prosecutors in these cases, but prosecutors in general as greedy guilty verdict-mongers who will do anything to win a case. Her attack of prosecutors for “coaching a witness” in particular seems downright hostile. I happen to know that it is common practice for ALL lawyers, prosecutorial and defense, to coach witnesses. They in a sense “train” their witnesses to respond with specific answers to certain questions that counsel asks. Knowing this, I point out that not once in the reading can it be found or stated that defense attorneys coach witnesses, so her attack of all prosecutors for doing this is found on a biased opinion itself. How is the reader supposed to properly form an opinion of the legal system if they are only given a higher moral view of defense attorneys? The fact is: the legal is designed to aid the defense in proving their clients innocence. It is not the system itself that is broken, so much as the people who have sway over it. To add to this argument I will state another thing. All of the ridiculous laws that the reader encouter’s in Innocents, such as the “21 day” law of Louisiana and others, were created and approved by people. Perhaps we should be focusing on helping people to understand, instead of fixing the system. After all, if the system is “broken,” doesn’t that mean that the people who created it are as well?
Whesley brings up a good point about not just the justice system, but the foundation on which all of our laws are based on. It is true that our (or any) society is far from perfect. It is impossible to create a perfect society, a utopia that virtually everyone strives for. But I respectfully disagree by asking: what exactly makes a society “completely fixed” from its cracks and flaws? Everyone has different answers to this question, but does that mean everyone on the entire planet is “broken” with the wrong beliefs because no one has been able to keep society from being “broken”? Of course, I am not defending anybody here, but know that there is no clear criterion to what makes a certain law or person “broken.” It is just impossible.
And about the defense attorneys being just as corrupt as the prosecutors to defend their position, can you explain where you got the idea that “the legal is designed to aid the defense in proving their clients innocence”? It is clear that after reading The Death of Innocents, whoever “wins” a trial will largely be based on whomever has more funds from the government. And the defense is not skilled enough to prevent cases such as Dobie’s and O’Dell’s. Is there any evidence to persuade us that freeing the guilty is more wrong than killing the innocent? With all the evidence Prejean provides, the last question should be easy to answer.
I think your comment is really interesting, and gets to the heart of these difficult moral issues. I agree with Spencer that Sister Helen does provide good documentation, but as you note, she is making a case! If you are interested in seeing her develop her argument in a different way, it might be interesting for you to read the first chapter of Dead Man Walking, in which she discusses the case of a man she firmly believes to be guilty. For Sister Helen, the issue transcends guilt or innocence. Maybe seeing that argument, without the protestations of guilt or innocence, would make a difference in the way you read her.
Or, perhaps, the bias she represents is not one you can relate to. I respect your continuing ambiguity, and hope you maintain a critical eye to all arguments. That is also a valid perspective.
I think when you’re reading something that’s obviously persuasive, you should be a little bit cautious. As others have mentioned, Prejean has an agenda. This is not a calm and unbiased presentation of facts, but a very specific view of reality meant to make us think in a certain way. With books like these the authors have already decided how you should feel, and they spend the majority of their pages detailing how you should think, so you have to be careful to make sure you go through the process of puzzling out opinions for yourself.
Sister Prejean did not change my opinion on the death penalty, though that is probably partly due to the fact that I mostly agree with her. Even a .01 percent chance that the state is killing an innocent person is too high. Right now I’m thinking that the death penalty should be illegalized based solely on the chance that an innocent person could be killed. However, I do not necessarily agree with her that all human beings have a dignity worth respecting. Ted Bundy took sick pleasure out of killing and sodomizing dozens of women. What human dignity is there in a man that has made himself a monster? Keeping people like him alive, in my opinion, would be the necessary price of ensuring that no one innocent was killed, not a reason for eliminating the death penalty in itself.
William, I fully agree with your comments. I don’t know numbers and statistical facts but I know that keeping people like Ted Bundy alive is expensive. People who I believe gave up their rights, stated in Article 3 and 5 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, when they chose to take away other peoples life and participated in torture, cruelty, inhuman, and degrading treatment (122). I’m not saying I support the death penalty, I believe no one or group of people should have the right to take someone else’s life away, but I am in agreement that it is a “necessary price”.
My opinion before reading Sister Helen’s incredibly passionate and persuasive statements against the death penalty were already in agreement with hers so my opinion did not change.
For me, reading this book has changed me from a soft supporter of the death penalty to a person who sees life imprisonment as a safer and possibly more just alternative.
Mainly what swayed me was the revelation that as a tool, the death penalty was failing to deter crimes any more than life imprisonment. What really clinched the argument against the death penalty for me were the ways injustice was systematically carried out in the justice system to further push political agenda or preserve a region’s penchant of targeting of minority groups.
I opened this book well aware that Sr. Helen Prejean had her own agenda. To further explore the point William makes, I think the first questions a reader should ask when they look at the title of this book is “Wrongful according to who?”. Sister Prejean? The Justice System? God? Someone else? Some sections of the book were blatant emotional appeals while other sections were consistently supported by research. Sister Prejean fully utilizes her literary arsenal to make her case, which works in her favor and encourages readers to reexamine their positions on this issue.
Reading this book has solidified my opposition to the death penalty. Before, my opposition was mostly based on moral grounds, but I feel now like I have a more solid grasp of facts — about racial prejudice, the lack of effective defense for the poor, geographical bias, the “petty procedural barriers” in the justice system, etc. — to back up my belief. Reading that only 2% of murderers are sentenced to death was especially shocking to me. Those 2% have supposedly committed the “worst of the worst” crimes, but the justice system has failed to outline objective criteria for such crimes. Without objective criteria for who deserves imprisonment and who deserves death, I don’t understand how the death penalty can be logically justified. From a financial standpoint, I also agree with Sr. Helen that the amount of money spent on executions — about two to three times the cost of life imprisonment — would be better spent on rehabilitation and anticrime programs.
As some of you have mentioned here and on other discussion questions, this book has made me seriously question the fairness and effectiveness of our justice system. I wasn’t completely naive about its flaws, but I am more convinced now that reforms are necessary. In reading about Colorado’s public defense system, though, I was impressed that they only hire lawyers who want to dedicate their careers to public defense. It seem like Colorado would serve as a good model for reforms in other parts of the country, particularly the South.
To comment on Whesley’s point: During high school, I was a member of my school’s Mock Trial Team. This is basically students competing against other schools in acting out fictionalized court cases. The witnesses, lawyers, time clerks, and bailiffs are all portrayed by students. The teams spend months studying the packet they are given describing the case in as full of detail as it can be described. Witnesses spend these months memorizing their witness statements and making sure they have all their facts right, and lawyers spend their time writing questions for their witnesses and building their cases against the opposing side, whichever side that may be. As an expert witness for the prosecution of one of these cases, I found myself attempting to memorize plenty of medical terms to explain the assault that occurred in the case. As I consulted with the prosecuting attorney that I would be performing with, he would tell me exactly how he wanted me to answer a question, so it would lead seamlessly into the next question and would build up credibility for the prosecution. As I read this discussion thread, the idea was founded in my mind that deliberate “coaching” of witnesses not only happens in high school competitions, but also in real life court cases, which was shown by Sister Prejean in The Death of Innocents. This topic is heavily covered on all of those law TV shows, and there is no way that they can just make that up out of thin air. I’m not trying to say that every prosecution lawyer does this, but it does happen on some occasions.
Anyway, I should probably answer the question posed at the beginning of this thread. Before reading this book, I figured that keeping death row inmates alive was always the better option. The way I saw it was that if they did do it, they would have to live with what they did the rest of their lives instead of getting the coward’s way out in death. When a face was put to the vague term of “death row inmates,” my opinions changed. For instance, in 2002, a pregnant woman, Laci Peterson, was murdered by her husband who lived just miles from me. As a nine-year-old boy, I was infuriated. I wanted this evil man to die for doing what he did to that woman, and rejoiced at his sentence of the death penalty. As I read this book, though. I realized that this man, who was portrayed by the media as being “evil,” had a background story to his life, too, just like Dobie Williams and Joseph O’Dell. Even if I am so sure that Scott Peterson killed his wife, and even though both Sister Prejean and I are so unsure that Williams and O’Dell committed their crimes, there are people who consider these people one in the same, since they were all convicted. Therefore, they all should have the same punishment, which deep in my heart I believe is life.
More or less, what I am trying to get at in this is that there are two sides to each story, may that story be the story of the court case I acted out in high school, or the court case of Scott Peterson which sentenced him to death. Since, unfortunately, the justice system the United States has today cannot show both sides of a case in their entirety, I feel as if life is a better option than death. The only person who knows a person’s whole story is that person alone.
Before reading this book, I didn’t really have much of an opinion on capital punishment. On one hand I understood that there are reasons for it and that it does serve a purpose, but on the other hand, I could never quite justify it since I didn’t really see what gave the government more right than anyone else to decide who should live and who should die. As I read this book I do have to say that my opinions have become more anti-capital punishment than not. What really made up my mind was the it seemed that the government could not guarantee a fair trial. In the both Dobbie and O’Dell’s case, it seemed clear that their trial was not conducted at a level that I think anyone would consider fair. I also agree with Lisa that the fact that there is no standardized way to decide what kind of crimes deserve the death penalty makes the death penalty unjustified.
However, I also agree with Tyler since I to was concerned about her credibility. I came into the book excepting bias, but while I wouldn’t necessarily say that she didn’t document her facts well, I do think that this book did contain more partial or skewed facts than I expected. One thing that struck me in particular was Prejean’s use of the bar graph showing the number of deaths per area. First she had the data separated by area (such as North or South) but then she put two states as the last column. By changing the way that she was categorizing the data from area to states in the middle of the graph she threw everything she was trying to say up in the air, since that graph could have easily been skewed to make it seem like there are more deaths than their actually are. After all, you cannot tell if the two southern states she separates into their own column are also included in the South column. After this I knew that I need to be a bit cautious of what she wrote.
As a few others have mentioned at this point, I started this book with a relatively open mind as to my position on the death penalty. Upon completing the book, which yes, is obviously one-sided (it would have been interesting to read a companion novel that was pro death penalty), I am starting to think I am on the side of life in prison without parole.
More than influencing me against the death penalty, like Lisa and others, Prejean reinforced my skepticism of our justice system and my frustration that there doesn’t seem to be a fool proof way to determine the guilty from the innocent. It brought back a question that I have pondered as to whether the death penalty is truly justice or is it revenge? And is there really a line between the two? I think if there is a line between the two it must be incredibly thin because when I try to rationalize the difference between justice and revenge I can’t come to a concrete answer other than the fact that they are two words with similar meanings but different connotations. However, with that said I do believe in a justice system that enforces laws for the safety of the population and disciplines those who break them (so yes, I guess I believe in revenge), I just wonder at the effectiveness and “right-ness” of the system.
Needless to say I will no longer be a citizen who blindly and naively believes the courts make the best, unbiased, and completely right decisions–after all the justices and judges and jurors are only human and are bound to make “wrong” decisions in the view of at least one person–herein lies why I don’t think we can ever have a perfect justice system.
Reading this book made me think less about the how bad the death penalty is, and more about how all the flaws that Sister Prejean hates come from the base of the judicial system. My pro-death stance has not changed. I’m more interested in learning about how many people have been sentenced to life in prison without parole when they were innocent or even just a couple of years.
The stark racism of the south, the crappy defense lawyers, and the political agendas of everyone involved in the trial do not disappear in cases that are not about life in death. Juries from deep south dealing with a small burglary case are still going to be just as undereducated and easily swayed as those in Dobie’s.
I’m very disappointed we didn’t read another book along with this one, because there’s not a whole lot of debate on if killing innocent people is wrong. And without other examples of death row inmates, there’s no wonder nearly everyone on this forum is now against the death penalty. All my friends are telling me that after reading the Death of Innocents I have to read In Cold Blood. So anyone looking for a companion book could pick that up.
Like many others, I didn’t have a strong opinion on the death penalty simply because I had never seriously considered it before. At first, I had a very hard time reading because of Prejean’s heavy bias. The opening stories did illuminate some valid points on the flaws of the justice system but I felt like they were oversaturated with pathos. This made me much less receptive to her argument simply because I thought it was too much.
What eventually convinced me to be against capital punishment were the arguments relating to “due process” and “equal justice under the law”. The fact that geography and the people involved with the trial, particularly the prosecuters and defense attorneys, had such a large role in determining whether or not a death sentence was even proposed was appalling. That is not equality. Those are severe cases of “wrong place at the wrong time”, but also with the wrong people and the wrong amount of money.
Justice should not hinge on these variables. Obviously as humans, there will be some errors, some discrepancies in the way justice, particularly as outlined by the Constitution, is meted out. But the flaws that Sister Helen points out in the way courts are run are inexcusable in my eyes. As this is something I haven’t seriously considered before, I would say that my opinion on this was formed rather than changed.
I started out with a rather undecided view of the death penalty, and I have to say that The Death of Innocents only succeeded in making my opinion more uncertain. Tyler and Whesley bring up very good points when they bring up that Sister Helen Prejean strays far from expressing an even treatment of all sides. Obviously that approach is to be assumed in a book of this nature, but that tactic ended up dominating my entire reading of it. I couldn’t help seeing how often there were pure emotional appeals or insinuating accusations. In both accounts of Dobie Williams and Joseph O’Dell, she presents every detail of their cases as if the reader is the new jury and she is the competent defense the accused never got. While this may be cathartic to a degree, the reader is placed in a position where they have to now take her word on all the details that she presents, which is little more convincing in itself than the tactics that the original trials seem to have employed.
While it is clear that the justice system greatly failed these two men, this book does little to show where exactly the flaw in that system is (apart from the death penalty itself). However, if it did change my opinion on anything, it would be in regards to the current appeals system. Like Sister Prejean says of herself in the book, I previously had more faith in the appeals system to root out those people who were wrongly convicted, but that evidently is not the case. Overall, that has to be the major benefit that I got out of this book, a more accurate view of the fact that the system is flawed.
Before I rad this book, I will admitt, I did not put much thought into the death penalty. This book has openned my mind and heart to the subject. However, even after becoming aware of the injustices of O’Dell and Dobie, I am still very conflicted about my feelings. Yes, innocent people should not be killed, but what about those who do kill? I just do not know at this time.
I am one more person who opened this book somewhat undecided about the death penalty. Because capital punishment does not directly affect me I had not given it much thought. When I was younger it seemed perfectly reasonable to execute a murderer – i.e. “a life for a life”. However, I was intrigued by a speech given by Prejean in which she says:
“People that do terrible crimes in the books of Justice – we can say ‘Yeah but they deserved to die.’ But here’s our question: ‘Who deserves to kill them? What happens to us when we get involved in this thing of killing?”
After reading Death of Innocents I am now against the death penalty. I have realized my conscience and religion does not allow me to kill a person, no matter how terrible. Even if our society executed a criminal 100 times as abhorrent as Ted Bundy, Al Capone, or Gary Ridgway (“The Green River Killer”), what it do to us when we take a life? How does it affect us, even in the deep recesses of our subconscious, to know that we were the ones who irreversibly pulled that switch or pushed that button?
I agree with William that our judicial system should not allow even the slightest chance of incarcerating/killing an innocent person. Allowing for the possibility of injustice, even in the slightest way, could be a slippery slope. How much should we tolerate?
I used to have complete trust in our judicial system but now I am skeptical. I did not know there could exist lawyers who slept through trials (209) and didn’t even bother to contact their clients before trial (197). Prejean does state that these occurrences are not the norm but it makes me cringe to imagine being represented by such an inept and seemingly apathetic counsel.
Prejean will inevitably bring bias to the book. However, as several others have stated she uses many facts and objective data that lessen the extent of her subjectivity. Therefore although she is obviously siding with the inmates, her overall presentation of the statistics and evidence is essentially sound. That being said as critical readers we shouldn’t treat everything she says at face-value. It doesn’t hurt to keep a grain of salt handy. I will say that she did not do well to support her stance by mentioning the Baldus study. She claims it provided irrefutable data that what “quite prominently” affected the implementation of death sentences was not “circumstances surrounding a murder” but race (213). She gives the Baldus study more credit than I think it deserves because although it was the most comprehensive of its kind (212) it was restricted to Georgia.
Overall, Prejean presented adequately reliable evidence that turned me against capital punishment. I was reminded me of a quote I heard once before that now sums up my thoughts on the practice. I don’t remember exactly how it goes but it went something like this: “You have the power to take a life when you have the power to replace that life. That is, when you can create a life from nothing.”
My opinion on the death penalty has not changed, only strengthened. I started out against the death penalty without any real solid reason why. Prejean succeeded in showing exactly why she thinks the death penalty is wrong and I agree with her on most points. What really pushed me over the edge, though was when she showed how miserably the justice system was failing innocent people. In the O’Dell case when he is forced to be his own lawyer because his lawyer was feeding strategies to the prosecution, I couldn’t believe it. And then higher courts ruled that his right to counsel hadn’t been violated? Seriously? And then when Prejean listed other cases in which defense attorneys had been drunk or high in the courtroom, but those defendants definitely had adequate counsel… really? It made me angry to think we even have ‘right to counsel’ but don’t actually enforce it…
I as well had not looked at the Death Penalty much before this book, but now I have an opinion. I feel like I haven’t FORMED an opinion per se, but rather uncovered one I already had. I feel that the Death Penalty is unjustified no matter the crime. Because one, does that make us any better than the killer? And two, killing the killer gives them no chance for remorse. Murder is a life choice that–while extremely terrible–is just a mistake that an individual has made. Nobody has someone telling them what to do in their heart, they have to make all decisions for themselves, ultimately. And the mistake of murder is just an amplification of the mistake of saying something hurtful to someone. Everyone has the ability to become a good person, no matter what they’ve done in the past. As for “protecting society,” the Death Penalty sets a precedent in society that makes death seem like more of a viable option. “They kill people, why can’t I?” Also, I’m confident in our jail system that imprisoning someone for life versus killing them is not risking the end of the world.
Generally, I am against the death penalty. I believe no one person should be able to decide who should be sentenced to death. There are so many factors that change individual’s opinions. In fact there are too many. As human beings we are not perfect. Our experiences, prejudices, religious and spiritual beliefs will always influence the way we perceive certain events. The culture in the South is much different than the culture in the East or the Midwest. The way we were raised, the values that our parents have emphasized have shaped our moral values we each hold. Sister Prejean presents all of these factors throughout the novel, clearly evidencing how simple, how easy, it is to kill a human being. One individual’s opinion on how the Constitution should be interpreted or how the Bible should be read can end a person’s life, guilty or innocent. I see this as an abuse of power. It should not be the decision of one individual.
However, after reading all the posts on this discussion page, I am still confused. It is important to protect society from dangerous individuals. I believe a sentence of life without parole is a suitable alternative to a death sentence. However, when does life without parole become a burden on the people it is keeping safe? I was appalled at the millions prosecutors and the states spend on trials. Killing a person, especially one that has committed a heinous crime, should not cost taxpayers millions of dollars. But if every murderer was sentenced to life on parole, wouldn’t the expenses eventually add up to the same amount?
But the system is flawed. As Lisa stated, only 2% of murderers are sentenced to death. There are no consistent ways to hand out a death sentence. No guidelines; no checks and balances. It seems we only have discrimination, political agendas, bias and imperfect human beings. I was not naïve about our justice system. It can never be perfect. But I feel like there is so much we can change. After reading this novel, I have simply formed a more solid opinion. Until the justice system can find a consistent set of guidelines to sentence a man or woman to death, I believe the death penalty should be abolished. The fact that innocent people are being subject to the horrors of the “machinery of death” should be enough to begin to create change. I cannot say whether a person deserves to die or not. But it should not be left up to a small group of people to make that decision either.
I will start by saying that when I started reading this book, I was mostly supportive of the death penalty. I think that stance comes partially from my family background, as my parents and older siblings are all supportive of death over life sentences. That being said, I have always been wary of the fact that with the death penalty, as with all punishments including jail time, comes the risk of punishing the wrong people. Up until recently I have been fairly trusting in our justice system, believing that a minimal number of innocent people were being punished instead of the guilty. While reading this book, I have come to question that trust. I do still believe that our justice system does for the most part convict the guilty and spare the innocent, but I have definitely begun to take notice of injustices taking place right under our noses.
As anyone reading this can probably tell, I do still have a lot of conflicting opinions flying around. I will say that my opinion has changed though. I had chosen a side before, and now I find myself very undecided. I can say with conviction though that Sister Helen Prejean did little to change my mind. Reading her book, I felt so pressured to be appalled and outraged at the injustices occurring that I felt almost suffocated under her constant attacks against anyone who has even an inkling of support for the death penalty. I can understand her passion and her desire to stir up emotion and action in her readers, but I think she went past being persuasive all the way to being ineffective. She gives her readers no room to waiver or to form their own thoughts. She bundles up her opinions in a nice little package, and hands them to you when you finish reading. I was hoping to find a story that would make me think and make me question every little detail; instead, I was handed a point of view on a topic and expected to accept it.
Sitting here now, I have to agree with Tyler’s first post. I am no more convinced now to completely abolish the death penalty than I was before. My change in opinion is due only to the stories of the two men told by Sister Prejean. I cannot be sure now whether they were innocent or guilty, and I don’t think it is up to me (or Sister Prejean for that matter) to guess at their guilt or innocence. I felt sorry for them both mainly, I think, because it is hard to read about or see the death of another human being. In my support of the death penalty, I had never really thought about the actual people being put to death, or their families and friends. They were always just faceless killers or rapists. It is hard for me now to support their deaths when I have the scene of Dobie and his mother stuck in my head. I cannot say that I want to abolish the death penalty, but I cannot say that I support it either. As usual, I am hopelessly undecided.
Before I started reading The Death of Innocents, I had a fairly undecided opinion about capital punishment. I took an Ethics class during my senior year at the Catholic high school that I attended and we had a unit on capital punishment. We often debated the issue and even after the class was over I still didn’t have a solid opinion on capital punishment. Do people that have killed others deserve to die? If they do, then capital punishment seems to be the answer to murderers. However, the issue of innocents being executed still remains. This point is what had always bothered me about capital punishment and had led to me being undecided about it.
While reading Sister Helen Prejean’s passionate account of the death of two innocent men, I was able to form some conclusions for myself. I believe that if someone has taken a life from another that they do not deserve to live, even in prison for life because they will be able to do simple things that their victim never will: eat, talk, read, visit with family, etc. However, the problem with this opinion/belief is that there is always the risk of innocent people being executed. I am obviously against the death of innocent people and because our justice system is seriously flawed then there is no way of knowing 100% that someone is innocent or guilty. After reading the book, I am very skeptical of our justice system and based on Sister Helen Prejean’s facts about the trials, I believe that our justice system is very corrupt and uncaring.
Therefore, my opinion on the death penalty is that people who have committed the terrible crime of killing another person should not be allowed to live, but because there is absolutely no way for our justice system to know if people are actually innocent or guilty then the death penalty should not be used in the United States. Instead, life in prison without parole should be used for those who have killed others.
I also cannot believe the injustice done to Joseph O’Dell. To me, the worst part was Paul Ray, the lawyer who clearly plotted against his client with the prosecution. After being fired, the fact that he was reappointed by the state multiple times shows that the judicial system was simply out to get O’Dell, no matter what; innocent or not. Also, the fact that O’Dell was willing to represent himself in court, without a lawyer, and gave his testimony based on fact; the size of the Camaro he owns, the clothing he wore (especially the shoes which were have said DID NOT match), the location, the Type-O blood sample (which happens to be the most common blood type) which should have proved his innocents if the courts simply took the time to acknowledge DNA tests.
I came into my junior year in high school with limited knowledge on the death penalty, and therefore my opinion on criminal justice and capital punishment was not very concrete. In my junior year I read the book Dead Man Walking by Sister Helen Prejean. That story was very different and yet very similar to her next book the Death of Innocent. It was different because in this book all of the death row inmates were innocent. In Dead Man Walking the reader had to deal with his or her own opinions of the death penalty under the worst possible conditions, someone who truly had committed a capital offence. In Dead Man Walking there was an inmate that she spiritually advised for that in my opinion given the facts was innocent. The first time reading that book made me wonder if humans could make a decision like that without being 100% sure of a man’s guilt if we should have the power to make that decision. Sister Helen’s book The Death of Innocents made my conscious even more confident that unless we can fix our justice system capital punishment should not be allowed.
When America was created our founding fathers created a system with checks and balances and three divisions of power in the three main branches the executive, the legislative, and the judicial branch. The executive branch was suppose to centralize power and give the nation a leader, but the founding fathers feared a duplication of the monarchy they just fought bitterly to exorcise themselves from and therefore put a term limit on the president only allowing him or her to stay in office for four years without re-election. The legislative branch was also given similar term restraints making sure they did not abuse their powers of law making. However, the judicial branch was given no such restraints because the founding fathers did not want the fear of re-election to cloud the judge’s view of the facts and the truth of someone’s crimes. Today our Supreme Court judges are still appointed by the president for life, but in many state and federal courts the judges are elected to their positions. In The Death of Innocents Sister Helen shows how judges in districts who actively support capital punishment always had a judge who found a way to sentence the death penalty whenever possible. Especially in the South, also called the Death Belt by Sister Helen, judges hardly ever grant appeals or stays of execution, and the Governors rarely grant pardons.
In our current judicial system capital punishment should not be allowed if we can not filter between the innocent and the guilty. If somehow we could duplicate the Supreme Court system and appoint judges for life at all levels then capital punishment might be allowed to return. I come from a Catholic School, and the opinion of capital punishment in the Catholic Church is that condemning someone to death is only allowed if that country cannot safely and securely imprison that person for life, and therefore fears for the safety of others. Lately, the Pope and other highly appointed Cardinals have been speaking out to back Sister Helen to completely eliminate the death penalty. I feel confident in our prison systems and their security, however, anything built by man can also be escaped by man. I feel in certain situations the best action to be taken is still capital punishment. However, there can be no doubt of that person’s guilt for that action to be true and all possible measures must be taken to ensure that he or she is given a fair and impartial trial.
Like many people in this discussion I went into Death of Innocents on the pro-death penalty side of the issue. After reading the book however, I found myself in support of abolishment. My feet are not firmly planted and I am still open to discussion and arguments for both sides. In principle I support the death penalty, mostly as a means of deterring future crimes of a similar nature. Having never experienced the murder of a loved one I am not particularly convinced by the revenge factor as a rationalization of murder, but I can see how a close relation to the victim could lead to strong motivation. For me the key factors in causing me to defect to the anti-death side are the numbers of innocents who are likely executed yearly and the randomness of the penalty. The former could be prevented by legislation that gives defense a better chance of proving innocence; the latter however is the result of a justice system being run by human beings. It would be impossible to eliminate all prejudice from the system without replacing everyone involved with robots. People, whether consciously or not, have biases that lead them to act strongly, potentially ignoring important factors when pursuing capital punishment. The fact that one person could receive the death penalty for a crime, while someone else would be granted life imprisonment for a similar crime leads me to agree that the death penalty is unconstitutional in the same way that “separate but equal” facilities were found to be unconstitutional.
As yet another person who started this reading without a strong stance either way, the first two segments alone (about Dobie Williams and Joseph O’Dell) were enough to persuade me that the death penalty should be illegal. That two men, with evidence suggesting that their guilt, at the least, was extremely dubious, could be executed by the government is unacceptable. Regardless of whether or not I personally believe that murderers deserve to die, the potential for executing the innocent is unacceptable at any level. The pathos-laden persuasion that Prejean utilized, as well as the deviations into theology and moral arguments, weren’t necessary for me, nor particularly effective – I could never decide whether or not someone deserved to die, but the facts of their cases (O’Dell’s appeal being denied based on a mistyped word, the denial of DNA testing to support his case, and the assigned defender who worked against him) speak for themselves. Even if those two cases were the only exceptions in thousands, the chance is too great. Humans will never be perfect and never be able to mete out perfect and exact justice – and because the function of the government is to protect its citizens, it should not have the power to decide which ones die with the potential for a mistake that grievous.
When I began reading The Death of Innocents, I held the same belief that I still have after finishing it; the death penalty is morally wrong as well as ineffective in preventing future crime. That being said, my opinions did change towards the American justice system as a whole after reading Sister Prejean’s book. This system is widely regarded as the most fair and decent of any around the world, allowing persons rights considered fundamental to our “land of the free”. While I was aware that the criminal justice system in the U.S. is not as just and equal as our constitution implies, I found myself shocked and appalled at the hideous flaws Sister Prejean exposes, specifically those surrounding the death penalty. The real issue, in my opinion, is not whether or not the death penalty is morally right or wrong, but whether our criminal justice system is fit to be carrying out indictments of life and death when it is so obviously biased and corrupt. When defense representatives can legally fall asleep in court and still be deemed to be doing their job by a judge, something is seriously wrong. When the vast majority of all persons sentenced to death are black males in the south, equality is clearly not being practised. When evidence supporting a person’s innocence is witheld because of the court’s arbitrary decisions not to allow it, reform is undeniably necessary.
Before reading this book I felt that the death penalty was a good way to punish those who have committed a horrible crime. I agree with Audrey though because if innocent people are going to be killed the death penalty should be removed. We should not take the chance to risk the lives of innocents just to kill those who did a horrible crime. Though, I don’t feel that people who commited a horrible crime should live it was horrible hearing the stories of Joseph and Dobie and realizing that even after all the obvious faults in the reasoning of the government and lawyers they were still killed. If this is something that would continue happening then the death penalty is not something that should stay in place.
Honestly, prior to reading this book I had little concept of the death penalty being controversial. Thus, I was for it, lackadaisically regarding it as an exception to Mohandas Gandhi’s famous mantra, “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind”. Little did I know that I was, in a different sense, blind. Blind not only to what I realize now to be the horrifying wrong that is the death penalty, but to the ironic injustice of our nation’s criminal justice system. The Death of Innocents irreversibly altered my stance on both matters. I can now say, with confidence, that I am against the death penalty and also incredibly critical of how our criminal justice system executes its cases (bad pun slightly intended). Obliviously, I had believed that the death penalty might be justified economically. To hear from Sister Prejean that it failed in that department inflicted the first blow. The second blow was dealt after learning that an incredible number of other countries had already deemed it illegal. Wrong in the eyes of other countries, some seen as considerably less progressive than our nation, but not wrong in the eyes of the United States? How could that be right? As you can probably tell, I , like others have expressed, was moved more by Prejean’s exposé on our criminal justice system’s inexcusable flaws more than anything else. Beforehand, I understood that any establishment run by humans has the propensity to be just as flawed, if not more flawed, than humans themselves. Therefore, I was never stunned to hear of the occasional, unintentional mistake within the American courts. However, gaining knowledge of how the system operated so ludicrously stringent shocked me, and as a result, foritified my growing opposition against the death penalty. Why does justice need a deadline? Why does a mere typo have the possible power to determine the fate of a human being? Shouldn’t the guarantee of justice be elastic in a system that is without a reasonable doubt marred by human imperfection? It simply baffles me that the chief purpose of our justice system, establishing and ensuring justice, is so easily undermined by petty obstacles set forth by the establishment itself. Then, the irreparable damage came. Learning of the proven inconsistency of the distribution of the death penalty regionally and demographically sickened me, to say the least. Equality for all? Hardly. Corruption for minorities, substantially in the South? Nearly guaranteed. This, above all Prejean exposed, swayed my previous conceptions the greatest. When injustice is present within the individuals bestowed with the power of serving justice to all, how can the lives of an individual, guilty or not, be put into their hands? The irony pains me.
Although disagreements over the effects of this book do exist, I found that (and I feel that all can agree) The Death of Innocents, while not necessarily a life-changing experience, does provoke a tremendous amount of reflection and thought from its’ reader. The ability to question a system so deeply rooted in human tradition, such as the death penalty, is what makes a great piece of work, whether it be in the form of a film, a book, music, etc. That being said, there are obvious points during which Sister Helen Prejean seems to be so enthralled in her own beliefs that she poses biased points with absurd and subjective logic (ie, her persistent and occasionally unfounded denigration of prosecuting attorneys). The very attorneys that Prejean chooses to bash are no less human than you and I. Some may be selfish, but that is a human quality. In this regard, I agree with some of what Tyler and Whesley (and others) have emphasized. Each and every passionate argument must be taken with a grain of salt. That is, we cannot believe everything that is thrown in our direction.
As I originally began to state, however, before I provided a counterargument for my own shift in thought, The Death of Innocents forces its reader (typified by the indifferent supporter of the current American justice system) to challenge his/her own presupposed opinion or lack thereof and formulate a more polarized judgment concerning, above all else, the value of a human life. It is quite obvious why Helen Prejean is able to make such an impact: she allows one to relate to the lives of men previously thought to be horrible and deserving of death. It is often convenient for me (for anyone) to take the easier route and take up a moderate stance rather than taking the time to question a belief supported by much of society. At the very least though, this book helped me to step away from my unwillingness to think for myself. One line in particular swayed my opinion. “If he dies, he will not simply die, he will be killed—which is not, I believe, God’s will and must be resisted fiercely and actively every step of the way.”
It is probably obvious that I went from being indifferent, or even mildly in support of the death penalty, to agreeing with many of the ideals that Prejean placed down for her reader to judge. It is obvious that the killing of an innocent individual is a heinous act. The larger issue, however, is that whether or not a state is justified in the killing of a guilty individual. Personally, I went from feeling that the punishment was only fair, to a deeper belief in the value of a human life regardless of atrocities committed.
I began this book without much interest in or solid information about the death penalty. The reality of its application today was shocking to me- I didn’t realize just how arbitrary this area of our justice system is. We are currently trusting our government with the responsibility of deciding whether certain citizens live or die, and after reading some key facts in this book, I believe this is a bad idea. Like several others have stated, it is unthinkable to consider even one innocent person being condemned due to politics, racial issues, or any other of the flaws in this system. I was also shocked to see that capital murder trials are so expensive! If it was far more costly to imprison someone for life (like I had vaguely imagined earlier) then I can see where I might have agreed that executing someone guilty of heinous crimes was better for everyone than keeping him alive at the cost of taxpayers. This is not the case, however, and I think life in prison is a far better alternative. Regarding the morality of the death penalty, I have not changed my opinion. I think it is morally right in certain cases to kill people for their crimes, but I do not have faith in this government to carry it out fairly or sensibly.
Like many others, I too approached this book with a limited knowledge of and impartial opinion toward the death penalty. I have personally never experienced it’s devastating effects, so I naturally inclined not to give it much attention. But I would definitely say that reading The Death of Innocents has provided a gateway of awakening for me. Sister Helen argues her case against the death penalty with flawless style and rhetoric. The way evidence was presented and used to justify her views, in my mind, seemed to leave not other correct opinion than her own. Morally speaking, there seemed to be no other “right way” other than hers. For example, if a defense attorney is incompetent, there should be no question about it that the defendant should be given a new one or receive a later case due to the effects of the attorney. Because of the way that facts were presented, I was swayed to Sister Helen’s side and now have an antiestablishment view toward the death penalty. It without a doubt is in need of a vast overhaul, if not total abolition.
Before reading the book I never felt that the death penalty was a viable punishment. There is no reason in my mind that would justify killing a person no matter what politicians and religious leaders say or quote. This book has just given me more reason to detest the death penalty. I had no idea before I read this book how the death penalty really worked other than that I knew that it killed people as a punishment for certain crimes. What this book has taught has not changed my opinion, but rather made me more outraged. Knowing that tax payers pay for such expensive trials, knowing that innocent men go away and are killed, knowing that jurors are lied to so that they are told to believe that the only way to keep society safe is by killing someone, and finally knowing what politicians and prosecutors will do to cover up truths.
Like many others on this page, I too went into this book rather indifferent and have come out opposed. However, my opposition to the death penalty is not on moral grounds. While I understand Sister Prejean’s argument that no one deserves the death penalty because it is cruel to those convicted, the book talks little about the suffering of the victims and their families. It is my opinion that those who commit truly heinous crimes, such as multiple murders or public terrorists like the unibomber, have left such atrocity and suffering that their actions merit the death penalty.
Where sister Prejean’s book most influenced me was not with its morality, but with its practice. It is nice to think that in a country like the United States of America, we could have a system of justice that truly practices equal justice for all, but as Prejean points out with the cases of Dobie and Joe O’Dell, this is simply not the case. Regardless of whether Dobie and/or Joe were innocent, their stories point out a clear prejudice in how the death penalty is practiced, and even more importantly, how defendants can be wrongly convicted due to an overly aggressive prosecutor or an incompetent defense attorney. It is my belief that one innocent death as a result of a flawed system is one too many, and that because the purity of judgement is easily tainted by prejudice, ambition, and corruption, the death penalty in practice should be abolished due to its ineffectiveness.
Edward, I don’t have definitive answer for you and frankly if someone said they did I would say “You sir, are full of crap.” There is no way to “fix” society. I have absolutely no idea how to go about removing biased people from office, or any of that sort. I’m merely pointing out that they are there, and THEY are the reason the system does not work.
Similar to a number of my peers, I entered into ‘The Death of Innocents’ with a flimsy, partially-formed option regarding capital punishment. I have always felt that living with guilt is a far greater punishment for wrongdoing than death and my opinion in the respect remains unchanged. What changed for me was my opinion regarding the equity of the process as a whole. The racial disparity between the number of white people sentenced to death and the number of minority people sentenced to death was sickening. I do not believe that more murders are caused by racial minorities than by white majorities and I certainly do not believe that racial minorities are more deserving of capital punishment. I was astonished to learn that cases were being presented – consciously or subconsciously – under such pretenses. I did a bit of my own research before posting here to see if alterations – in either attitude or in law – had been made in the justice system since the book was published in 2005. Unfortunately and unsurprisingly, there have been no significant changes. A quick Google search yielded a 2010 study by the Washington Law Review that found that “[r]ace and place disparities persist in the administration of the federal death penalty” (490). I tried to add a link, but if that doesn’t work, Google “The Racial Geography of the Federal Death Penalty – Washington Law Review”. In addition to the study, there were two articles in the New York Times this morning about the role of race in capital punishment. One article was set in Georgia, the other in Texas. In both cases and black man was being tried for murder and was on death row, days away from the end. This is the issue, not the administration of the death penalty in general but the administration of the death penalty on minorities, on which my opinion has changed.
Initially, I began the book with the though that the death penalty wasn’t so bad. Although I felt it to be morally wrong I could sympathize with the hypothetical argument that someone, such as Dobie, who had an IQ that qualified him for mental retardation maybe should be sentenced to death due to the fact that he cannot benefit society. Yes, I understand that this is wrong but you have to agree that it is slightly logical.
As I read the stories of the other victims who were wrongly convicted my feelings didn’t change much. Of course if one were to be wrongly convicted then that individual should not be sentenced to death. I believe everybody sympathizes with that.
But, in my eyes the book did little to change my opinion that those guilty of murder should be sentenced to death. However, as I began the book I was also watching the show “Doctor Who”. If you’re unfamiliar with this show it is about this “alien” who is the last of his kind due to a war. Now, although an uncompassionate species destroyed everything the main character loved he continued to give second chances to the wrongdoers that he met during his travels. After watching “Doctor Who” and then reading the story about the father, who did not wish the death penalty upon the man that killed his child, I noticed that my feelings had changed. Any person no matter how hanous the crime no longer deserved death. Compared to how I felt after reading the first few stories to reading the final few stories I noticed that the book did not do much to sway my opinion that the death penalty should be intact for murderers. However, after watching “Doctor Who” I felt that I could sympathize alot more with the book and what the character’s were feeling as death entered into their lives. In tandem the two worked very well together to change my opinion that the death penalty should be abolished. But without the Doctor I feel that the Death of Innocent’s plea would have gone unanswered by my moral self.
Too bad that still leaves the problem that we have way to many people incarcerated….
I never truly gave the death penalty much thought due to the intangibility of my mind’s ability to grasp the slightest reality of such a punishment. Prior to reading The Death of Innocents, the death penalty was just the pairing of two words that never really sparked too much emotion – a phrase that was simply (and understandably) foreign to my eighteen years of life.
Sister Helen Prejean has shone light on the fact that “torture is legalized.” While reading about the gurney, the chamber, the lethal injections, the supporters of the death penalty…it all makes me feel uneasy. With the knowledge and first-hand experiences that the author provides, how could anyone consider the ‘machinery of death’ a tool to depict a righteous act of justice?
The lack of fairness regarding the death penalty came to be one of the key reasons that led me not support it. Like William said, “even a .01 percent chance that the state is killing an innocent person is too high.” There are too many flaws in the courtroom; in my mind, it correlates to the erroneous attempt of solidifying a study in social science. No matter how close the justice system is to proving an individual guilty, it seems unfeasible to sentence someone to death with such absolute assurance of their guiltiness. I agree that life in prison without parole is a perfectly suitable alternative to death, thus eliminating the hypocrisy of taking ‘an eye for an eye.’
As a society, we should promote the abolishment of the death sentence on the premise of the apparent flaws surrounding its accuracy. In reference to David Lawson, everyone “is a human being,” and no individual should be sentenced to death based on the judgments of others.
Before I read Death of Innocents, I was uncertain of my position, but leaned more towards being in favor of the death penalty. I had questioned the morality of it, but believed that a life for a life made sense. And, why would taxpayers want to fist over more money to support the lives of convicted murderers? I had no idea that only two percent or less of death sentences in 2002 were imposed on murderers. This knowledge was a shocking discovery for me. Were we executing fairly for the crime committed? And, what would make it right to kill certain convicted murderers if we gave the majority of other convicts with similar cases life without parole? I was also surprised to learn that executions cost two to three times as much as life imprisonment. Right away, I knew that the money saved from executions could be used to fund prevention programs, which, I believe, are one of the few actions we can conduct in order to reduce heinous crimes. Having previously doubted the moral justification of executions, these two details played a major part in revealing my belief that we should abolish the death penalty.
This book solidified my views on the death penalty. I came in against it, because I’m against the killing or imprisonment of human beings without giving them the opportunity or incentive to change their life around (I also came into this book against life without parole). In the end, I realized that the death penalty should be abolished because the state shouldn’t have the ability to determine whether its citizens have the right to live or die. There is just to much opportunity for corruption to overtake the system, whether it be via racism, socioeconomic disadvantage, or politics. Sentences of life with the ability of parole are by far the best option in my mind, because it allows for mistakes to be reversed and for prisoners to rehabilitate themselves and be reintegrated into society.
What this book did substantially change for me was the possible role that religion could play in shifting the mindsets of the faithful to encourage the abolition of the death penalty. I originally never contemplated the potential that religious pressure could play in positively shaping public policy (primarily because when religion gets involved in policy making, it generally doesn’t bring good results). The Catholic Church’s 180 on the death penalty will go a long way to advancing the cause of abolishing capitol punishment.
I have grown skeptical of our criminal justice system over the past few years as I have learned more about the way the system is meant to function, and the way it functions in actual practice.
It appears I am not alone in that I began this novel without strong views regarding the death penalty and how it is carried out in our criminal justice system. Just as Charlotte mentioned earlier, I too have held some underlying, and clearly unsubstantiated belief, that sentencing a guilty prisoner to death was a cheaper alternative to life in prison without parole. While I am unsure of where that belief had come from, it was something that, in the back of my mind, had allowed me to consider the death penalty as a necessary and just punishment.
This book presented me with many facts to consider for myself, the actual cost of a capital trial being one of them. Looking at the facts, I have certainly let go of my belief that death was a cheaper punishment. Many of the facts that Prejean presents were helpful in forming my own opinions; however, like many of you, I was always hesitant to accept all that was presented to me, because Prejean has such an agenda with this book. I was constantly on my guard as a reader, checking in with myself to see if I was simply believing all that I was told, following along with a well-pitched argument, or if I could stop for a moment and be critical of what I was being told.
I began to take everything with a grain of salt. Like others, I too felt that Prejean was trying to persuade me on an emotional level, and despite resisting that persuasion, and trying to maintain a little skepticism, I found it was impossible not to have an emotional response to this issue. Regardless of Prejean’s tactics, there was no way I could look at this issue and not feel something.
So, while the opinions I formed, based on fact and feelings, are against the death penalty, I also came to another conclusion. It is not necessarily bad to be persuaded on an emotional level. That is not to say that one shouldn’t puzzle out those feelings in his or her mind later while looking at the facts, but there is certainly a reason we humans can relate on an emotional level. Even though it may not be logical, and one may experience a response without having weighed out all the facts, the gut reaction we experience is something that I believe is important for each of us to acknowledge and trust. In addition to that visceral sense, one is still able to explore and reexamine the facts to find out what they think, alongside what it is that he or she feels immediately.
Of course, as an author Prejean is smart to target her readers emotionally, but simultaneously, how can this issue be looked at without emotion? Furthermore, isn’t emotion or a gut feeling exactly what sways a jury member, or a judge during a case, regardless of whether or not the information they are presented with is fact or biased by one side or the other? There is simply no way to take this emotional and visceral response out of human processes and systems, so to a certain degree, we may need to allow ourselves to be touched on this level by people who are passionate about what they believe in. It seems that by allowing a visceral human response to factor into our decision-making we may be able to make decisions that are morally sound and true to our own collective human nature.
Like many others, I did not have much of an opinion on the death penalty before reading this book. I honestly did not even know if Oregon used the death penalty. I found that they do, but not often at all. Growing up in Oregon I believe is one of the reasons I had not thought much about the death penalty, whereas if I had grown up in Texas for instance, it would have been something I most likely was in favor of.
After reading this book, I’m still not sure whether I am completely opposed or in favor of the death penalty, but I know that if innocent people are being killed then it is not being used in the proper way, and therefore the system should be changed. One of the biggest things I found that bothered me about the death penalty, and in the stories that were told, was that people of color or that were in poverty were easy targets and couldn’t seem to get a good lawyer or get things to go in their favor no matter what. That is not how the law works, so in my opinion, if the courts cannot impose the law without discrimination, or make sure that the people they are killing are one hundred percent guilty, then the death penalty should not be used.
My opinion has mostly remained the same, as I have never believed that the death penalty was right or just. However, this novel has made the issue much more potent and real to me. It also enlightened me to the corruption in the system that I had never realized existed, and one day I hope I have the opportunity to help change it.
During the past school year, I spent a fair amount of time studying the United States Judicial System. Before reading The Death of Innocents, I knew that there were good and bad sides to the system; aspects beneficial to our country, and sometimes adverse to justice. Our court system is organized as an adversarial system, meaning that a person only has to be proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. In most European countries, there is an inquisitorial system, where the judges actually spend time investigating the case to discover the truth about a situation or crime. Over the years, our court systems have greatly improved, but if this book showed me anything, it is that our justice system still has immense flaws. The death penalty is already a questionable practice when a person is truly guilty of heinous crime. I don’t think anyone should think lightly of ending a human being’s life. But when the death penalty is ending the lives of innocent people, something is seriously wrong; especially when the victims have been condemned due greatly to prejudices. Our justice system has improved greatly throughout the years, but Sister Helen has made me realize it still has a long, long, way to go for our country to be a place of true equality and justice for all.
I was against the death penalty before I read this book, mostly because I thought killing was wrong. But now it’s the discrepancies in our doling out of the death penalty that most appalls me. “Equal justice under law” doesn’t guarantee laws that we all approve of, but it does promise that the laws will be applied to all citizens equally. My views towards our justice system in general are what were most changed by reading this book. The continuation of the death penalty, coupled with our ineffective of our plea bargaining system, and many more issues that must exist that I’m not familiar with, make me lose confidence in our courts’s abilities to evolve as new problems surface
Saying my opinion on the death penalty changed during the course of reading this book wouldn’t be the best way to explain how this book changed me. Before reading it, I had little an opinion to give. I’d never had a meaningful experience with it, and they way I saw it was if someone killed another out of cold blood, then they didn’t deserve to live. I realize now how insensitive that was, and I can’t believe I was ever even apathetic about the death penalty. Particularly after seeing how the lives of two innocent men were taken, in one case largely because of a racial issue, and a lack of desire from the court to grant him another appeal despite new analysis of evidence, I’ve come to understand how incredibly perverted our justice system must be. Innocent until proven guilty, that’s what we our justice system is based off of, not innocent until probably guilty. Sister Prejean has changed the way I look at our courts, and most importantly through her accounts of the finals days of these two men, she created in me a new comprehension of the wrongs the death penalty commits on our society.
Before reading this book and learning more about Sister Helen Prejean’s works, I disagreed with the death penalty merely because of my moral stance. This book has educated me not only of the social injustices that come with the death penalty, but also the corruption of our judicial system. It’s disturbing to know that the states which enforce the death penalty are also the states which formerly supported slavery, and that most of the prosecuted are of color. It also baffles me that our supposedly just and equal legal system can vary so greatly depending on region. My faith in our nations courts have decreased dramatically, and I now have a stronger opposition towards the death penalty in this country.
Before I read The Death of Innocents, I really didn’t know very much about the court systems or the death penalty. I didn’t pay much attention to the news about the death penalty debate or whether or not someone that was convicted of a crime was truly guilty or not. I never paid attention to the way an article in the news was written or conveyed…or looked for any biases in the writer’s approach. Like Sister Helen Prejean and many others, I assumed that the men and women that were executed were guilty of horrendous crimes such as murder, with a very small portion being innocent. As Sister Helen mentioned in the book, people think that our justice system is the best in the world and the words “equal justice under law” is inscribed on the portals of our Supreme Court building. I assumed that if we’ve made mistakes about the innocence of someone, it didn’t happen very often what with all of new technology in our modern world and the DNA testing that can be done. What I’ve learned from this book is that all of the changing technology in our world can’t help an innocent convict if people don’t change. For instance, the prosecutors and judges that find ways around the law and allow their biases to seep through to the justice system so often that it becomes normal and then denying that they are doing those things or stating that it cannot be change. But like Justice Thurgood Marshall stated, “The American people are largely unaware of the information critical to a judgment on the morality of the death penalty…If they were better informed they would consider it, shocking, unjust and unacceptable” (234). I believe that much of the issues in our government are largely due to the ignorance of the American public. With the government hiding information from the public to save its reputation, many Americans don’t have the time or don’t think twice about actually getting involved in their democracy. I think one of the reasons why the court system is able to do what Sister Helen has said they’ve done is because the public is unaware of it. Take, for instance, in chapter four, the state and federal courts denied David Lawson’s request to have his execution videotaped and broadcast stating that he “wanted the people of North Carolina to know they were killing a man” (264).
I really like Virany’s comment above about how our changed technology can’t help anyone if we don’t change as a race. I think that comment applies to a lot of the constitutional discussion that Prejean begins in the book. She talks about how the Constitution was written as a changeable document because the founders were aware that they would be unable to accomplish writing a document that could be permanent and last forever. This changeability is what has enabled our country to grow into what it is today, I definitely believe after reading this book that it’s time to re-evaluate the Constitution’s wording on the justice system and the death penalty itself. Our Constitution is meant to change with us, right now it sounds like it is a little behind when in comes to this issue.
Before i read this book i firmly believed in the ideology supporting the death penalty. Every time i watched a criminal justice show on TV and a man or woman was found guilty of a gruesome crime i never had a moments hesitation in condemning them to death. i never gave much thought in many of the points Prejean brings up.
One of the main points that really influenced my change in opinion was the fact that the United States justice system seems unable to implement the death penalty in a fair way. For one, how does one begin to create a criteria that separates a heinous crime from a non-heinous crime? I now believe that this can not be done. This inconsistency is an obvious flaw that, in my opinion, nullifies most arguments in support of the death penalty. this is where the social problems also began to affect my original opinions. How is it fair that a guilty poor African American man has a greater chance of being sentenced to death then a guilty rich Caucasian man? If the US can not find a way to implement the death penalty in a fair way then it should not practice it because it is too large of a responsibility.
Like many others, I was quite unaware of the debate on capital punishment and did not have a developed opinion. I did, however, believe that the death penalty should be completely abolished so I found myself agreeing with Prejean’s arguments. But I built that opinion solely on the bias that Virany addressed: that our nation’s justice system is “equal justice under the law.” I soon found myself baffled that there were actually innocent people being put to death without being given a proper hearing to prove their innocents. I was especially compelled when Prejean mentioned the corruption of many prosecutors who would plead for the death sentence simply for the sake of “winning big”, manipulating evidence and ultimately taking away all hope from helpless defendants. That is also a contributing factor to the arbitrary application of capital punishment, another compelling argument that Prejean opens up in her novel.
Overall, The Death of Innocents has caused me to re-think my opinions on the death sentence. While I initially agreed with Prejean, I wasn’t aware of the bigger picture. I agree with Kory and Schere that the constitution needs some serious re-evaluation if it is to be implemented fairly.
So before I read Prejean’s book my feelings were that your punishment should more or less match your offense. So the death penalty which punishes those who kill made good sense to me. Someone that deprives another of life should be dealt with. After the read my opinion is the same, those who murder an innocent person should be killed, it’s only fair after all, but after reading this book I realized what really mattered. Governments are always run by people that are not going to be particularly worried about the woes of a couple individuals, in fact in many politicians’ eyes the mere power of office is more important than serving the populace. In short, responsibilities cannot be trusted to officials that are willing to let an innocent person die. Now I’ll get to my change in feeling. The government cannot be allowed to administer the death penalty because the government will misuse that right and innocents will die. It’s a question of what we gain and what we lose, ok so we aren’t able to get rid of killers, but at least we aren’t killing innocents.
So before I read Prejean’s book my feelings were that your punishment should more or less match your offense. So the death penalty which punishes those who kill made good sense to me. Someone that deprives another of life should be dealt with. After the read my opinion is the same, those who murder an innocent person should be killed, it’s only fair after all, but after reading this book I realized what really mattered. Governments are always run by people that are not going to be particularly worried about the woes of a couple individuals, in fact in many politicians’ eyes the mere power of office is more important than serving the populace. In short, responsibilities cannot be trusted to officials that are willing to let an innocent person die. Now I’ll get to my change in feeling. The government cannot be allowed to administer the death penalty because the government will misuse that right and innocents will die. It’s a question of what we gain and what we lose, ok so we aren’t able to get rid of killers, but at least we aren’t killing innocents.
Before reading this novel, I was very much for Capital punishment and believed strongly in it as a form of justice. Though not merciful or even fair, I always thought it to be somewhat just which is what our law system is fundamentally based on upon. If you kill someone, you should lose your life: simple as that. However, after reading this novel it really opened my eyes to this flawed system. How can it be just when so many other variables come into play? Racism, quick assumptions, and the like all can contribute to the death of someone who may very well be innocent. That isn’t just. You can’t have a flawed system when it comes to taking the life of another human being. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s possible to be flawless when it comes to capital punishment and therefore, my opinion has changed. I no longer see Capital Punishment as acceptable or a just form of our justice system. I’m fortunate to have read this novel because sometimes it takes an inside look and a wide spectrum of human emotions to see a system for what it truly is.
I’ve always been firmly against the use of capital punishment. In my opinion, the death penalty is inhumane and falls under the definition of “cruel and unusual punishment.” Society currently has the means to protect itself against these dangerous individuals by means other than killing another person, and if such an option exists (such as sentencing someone to life without parole), why anyone choose to kill/murder another individual? Therefore, Prejan did not really change my opinion on capital punishment all that much. Her arguments and points simply reinforced my prior beliefs.
However, my opinion on the criminal justice system did change slightly. I had taken a introductory criminal law class at a summer program before, so I had a small amount of prior knowledge about the way the American justice system works. I was shocked at the poor procedure, weak prosecution, corruption, and blatant lying that Prejan described in the cases of Dobie Williams and Joseph O’Dell. I had always believed (and wanted to believe) that the justice system treated all people fairly, regardless of social class, race, creed, ethnicity, and belief. I’m well aware that these prejudices still exist in parts of society today, but I thought that of all places, it wouldn’t exist in the justice system in a country that prides itself on fairness and equality (especially considering the Civil Rights Movement was almost 50 years ago.) I am slightly more skeptical of the justice system than I was prior to reading this book, though I still believe (and want to believe) that it will treat every criminal as fairly as possible. Prejan just opened my eyes to the lack of equality that some people still receive from the government.
My opinion about criminal justice and capital punishment has not changed after reading the Death of Innocents. I admit that there are people who abuse their power to kill the innocents, but that does not mean the capital punishment itself is evil. It also does not give us permission to abolish it. For example, many countries do not allow gun possession to their citizens for safety purposes. Unfortunately, the prohibition of a gun possession leaves citizens with no power to protect themselves from the gangs and mafias who are ignorant towards the laws of their country and still have gun possessions. Having a gun itself is not evil; people who abuse it are evil. Therefore, I believe that although what people have done to Dobie Williams and Joseph O’Dell was not right, we should not abolish death sentencing.
The Death of Innocents made me reconsider my views of the death penalty and of the justice system. Before reading it, I believed that the courts almost always made the right decision and when they didn’t, it was because they had a legitimate reason (such as forensic methods not being advanced enough to read the evidence correctly). I hadn’t thought much about capital punishment but gave it’s use a vague and uninformed approval in certain cases.
Now I question how we can condone a punishment that sets us at the same level as the murderer. If a murderer is tried because he killed someone and then the justice system kills him, then shouldn’t the justice system be guilty of the same crime? We hold ourselves to different standards than than the people we persecute and that doesn’t seem right to me.
Death penalty proponents cite the old saying, “An eye for an eye,” to garner support, while conveniently forgetting its ending. Obviously, we are going blind if we cannot see that by executing criminals, we are also gouging eyes. The cycle of violence is being perpetuated and not to society’s benefit. In order to end this cycle, the justice system needs to show that it is above murder, even a legalized version, and that it is in no way acceptable, no matter who commits it, be it the individual or the government.
I agree with Mr. Caufield on the point that it is not possible to set a strict standard of heinous vs. non heinous. Every attorney, judge, or jury member is sure to have a slightly different idea of what constitutes a heinous crime. Crime is clearly to black and white as it comes in all forms with different results and intent. It was shocking to me to see how inconsistently the death penalty is carried out. Or rather, how consistently it is carried out in very biased and disconcerting ways. Sister Helen did an excellent job of pointing out the racism and geographical flaws in the death penalty and court systems. It was also very moving to read the accounts of two innocent people put to death by the state. Because of the above reasons, it seems that the death penalty is not executed in such a way that it can legally be upheld in our country. Therefore I say it must either be extremely reformed (which sounds nearly impossible) or put to death itself.
It’s important for anyone reading this comment to know that I do not support the death penalty. However, my main reason has less to do with mercy for those committing a crime, and more to do with the belief that we are incapable of accurately making the decision of whether a fellow human should live or die. At least a life in prison ensures that they will have a long time to try to prove their innocence if that is what they need.
I was deeply, emotionally touched by this book. I felt a strong connection to both men portrayed by Sister Prejean. Her attention to detail in citation also impressed me. With each new “fact” I felt more strongly that prosecutors were bad, our government was horribly flawed, and the justice system was a disgusting mess. Thankfully, I took a moment to step back. I reflected on Sister Prejean’s style, point, and procedure. With the facts she gives, it is obvious that something should change, and that we are killing innocent people whether we want to face it or not. But what I would really be interested in reading is a book with an opposite point of view.
Facts, statistics, and numbers are a tricky business. While they seem like finite evidence, they can still be slanted depending on circumstances in the research required to find them, or even in their presentation. I wonder as I read whether all statistics are honestly portrayed.
I think Sister Prejean is a skilled writer and artist. Art evokes emotion. she has definitely accomplished that. And I am thankful for her passion. Without a person in her position, doggedly pursuing reform, we would not have a working system. We NEED her. Unfortunately, though at this point many of us consider them the enemy, we need pro-death advocates just as much. Without them we lose democracy. We lose debate. We lose the opportunity to stretch ourselves as we are now in trying to take meaning from this book.
We would be foolish not to take this novel with a grain of salt. We would be foolish to ignore it’s idea’s. But the biggest thing I learned from this novel is that without Sister Prejean, and without our comprehension and discussion, our infinitely flawed system would have no foundation to repeatedly rebuild upon. Thank God we are arguing about it right now.
My view of the law system as a whole in America has never been all too favorable, what with knowing the flaws of human nature, so naturally I assumed that there were flaws in the system, specifically along the lines of corruption, bribery, etc. However, these views had never been grounded in concrete fact, but, were instead beliefs I had acquired after hearing horror stories about the criminal justice system from friends, family, and the news. After reading this book though, I realized the extent to which the flaws in the justice-and specifically criminal justice system-reaches, and can sadly say that my opinion of our government has just decreased. Although I knew that there were flaws in the criminal justice system and that some innocent people would be put behind bars while some guilty remained free, I had no idea that the ‘some’ I was thinking of was such an underestimate. Now when reading stories of people put in jail after being convicted in trail, I don’t immediately feel satisfaction at our justice system but question whether or not that person was innocent or not, and whether all the facts were laid out on the table.
I began this book with an undecided opinion on the death penalty, but with an open mind. I was prepared to learn the facts about the ‘other side’ of the argument, which argues for abolishing the death penalty. As I read further into the book, however, I noticed that Sister Prejean’s passionate rhetoric was sounding oddly familiar. Prejean condemns the prosecution in both cases she discusses in her book for using ‘insinuations’ to sway the jury toward voting for death, yet she uses the same tactics to convince the reader of her agenda. Prejean uses almost entirely connotative language, loosely relates her point to thick theological discussions of morality, and refuses to give credit to evidence that cannot prove her case. My opinion on criminal justice is still ambiguous; I am wary of both the system and its critics. Prejean’s book, while powerful and emotional, does not seem like a credible source on which to base an opinion. Her criticism’s sheer lack of credibility, in fact, solidifies my opinion that our current justice system, while having some flaws, is overall a valid and essentially sound method of enforcing justice in our country.
I would like to address this reply to Tyler’s original post. It seems to have evoked the most response not only because it was among the first, but because it rejects a perfectly credible source like Sister Prejean’s “The Death of Innocents.” I began this book being in favor of the death penalty. In short, it completely changed my opinion. While Prejean has her bias like anyone else, I feel the majority of the time she remained expository and informative giving real statistics about the dis-proportionality of death sentences given to poor over rich, and minorities over whites. Those facts I feel should weigh heavily on the minds of any reasonable person when the faced with the prospect of allowing the state to take a person’s life. While statistics don’t always mean something to the individual, circumstances certainly do. It is most plainly described as a lack of proper representation and unequal justice before the law, when poor minorities such as Dobie Williams or Joseph O’Dell become the victims of circumstance and prejudice, and are given inept lawyers for defense and biased juries by ambitious prosecutors. How can you believe capital punishment is a sound institution, when is has so many obvious inherent flaws? I now personally believe that no one should have the right to take life, not even the government, and under civil circumstances that should always be the case. Life in prison without parole is a perfectly suitable alternative to death, because it removes the individual from society and ultimately cost the state less, due to the absence of lengthy capital trials.
I would also like to address your comment concerning Prejean’s loose connection to theological discussion. Yes, I also felt it was indeed tedious and strayed somewhat from the issue. But certain elements of theology are very difficult to relate to modern life. When I began this book I was very wary of the fact that a religious figure was attempting to influence a political issue. I more than anyone, want public policy to move forward in a secular manner. However, religion plays a large role in the lives of millions of jurors as well as the lives of political leaders. For that reason alone the subject needed to be addressed. Prejean’s meticulous debate over the fine points of certain scripture indeed served its purpose when Justice Scalia attempted to justify his consent to execute numerous death row inmates with religion. Although I am personally and atheist, I feel Sister Prejean’s accomplishment with the Catholic Church was an enormous stride to end the death penalty.
In regards to the judicial process, I was shocked to find that (often times) the original police reports are not often used. To me, this makes absolutely no sense. The fact of the matter is, the human brain’s recall tends to not be 100% accurate. When there is a memory gap, one’s brain tends to fill in the gaps with what MAY have occured. The further one gets from an incident, the more likely it is for them to unknowingly give a false account of what happened. Again, why are the original police reports not used in court, a majority of the time? These reports are fresh and are the closest that anyone will come to an uncensored reporting of the facts and eyewitness accounts. This has greatly changed my view on the judicial process, due to the fact that the initial account of what occured is likely to be the most accurate, assuming that witnesses are not giving false testimony.
(I apologize that this post came as a ‘reply’. I don’t know how to create a separate response to the question)
Tyler,
I’d like to start by saying that I respect your position and your thoughts. I’d like to rebut your statement, which challenges the credibility of The Death of Innocents and Sister Prejean. She was an incredibly diligent author, making sure that any facts about cases or statistics were thoroughly researched and cited. The extensive endnotes section is a testament to that claim. Who would have more credibility than someone who experienced the situation first-hand? Of course I realize that her position represents a bias, but when it comes to a topic as serious as capital punishment, polarization is compulsory
I’d like to back up Tyler’s position with a thought of my own. Before saying anything else I will state that I hope to become a prosecutor one day, but I should hope that would not immediately make me appear to be against this book from the start. That being said, I DO believe that Sister Prejean paints not only the prosecutors in these cases, but prosecutors in general as greedy guilty verdict-mongers who will do anything to win a case. Her attack of prosecutors for “coaching a witness” in particular seems downright hostile. I happen to know that it is common practice for ALL lawyers, prosecutorial and defense, to coach witnesses. They in a sense “train” their witnesses to respond with specific answers to certain questions that counsel asks. Knowing this, I point out that not once in the reading can it be found or stated that defense attorneys coach witnesses, so her attack of all prosecutors for doing this is found on a biased opinion itself. How is the reader supposed to properly form an opinion of the legal system if they are only given a higher moral view of defense attorneys? The fact is: the legal is designed to aid the defense in proving their clients innocence. It is not the system itself that is broken, so much as the people who have sway over it. To add to this argument I will state another thing. All of the ridiculous laws that the reader encouter’s in Innocents, such as the “21 day” law of Louisiana and others, were created and approved by people. Perhaps we should be focusing on helping people to understand, instead of fixing the system. After all, if the system is “broken,” doesn’t that mean that the people who created it are as well?
Whesley brings up a good point about not just the justice system, but the foundation on which all of our laws are based on. It is true that our (or any) society is far from perfect. It is impossible to create a perfect society, a utopia that virtually everyone strives for. But I respectfully disagree by asking: what exactly makes a society “completely fixed” from its cracks and flaws? Everyone has different answers to this question, but does that mean everyone on the entire planet is “broken” with the wrong beliefs because no one has been able to keep society from being “broken”? Of course, I am not defending anybody here, but know that there is no clear criterion to what makes a certain law or person “broken.” It is just impossible.
And about the defense attorneys being just as corrupt as the prosecutors to defend their position, can you explain where you got the idea that “the legal is designed to aid the defense in proving their clients innocence”? It is clear that after reading The Death of Innocents, whoever “wins” a trial will largely be based on whomever has more funds from the government. And the defense is not skilled enough to prevent cases such as Dobie’s and O’Dell’s. Is there any evidence to persuade us that freeing the guilty is more wrong than killing the innocent? With all the evidence Prejean provides, the last question should be easy to answer.
Tyler,
I think your comment is really interesting, and gets to the heart of these difficult moral issues. I agree with Spencer that Sister Helen does provide good documentation, but as you note, she is making a case! If you are interested in seeing her develop her argument in a different way, it might be interesting for you to read the first chapter of Dead Man Walking, in which she discusses the case of a man she firmly believes to be guilty. For Sister Helen, the issue transcends guilt or innocence. Maybe seeing that argument, without the protestations of guilt or innocence, would make a difference in the way you read her.
Or, perhaps, the bias she represents is not one you can relate to. I respect your continuing ambiguity, and hope you maintain a critical eye to all arguments. That is also a valid perspective.
I think when you’re reading something that’s obviously persuasive, you should be a little bit cautious. As others have mentioned, Prejean has an agenda. This is not a calm and unbiased presentation of facts, but a very specific view of reality meant to make us think in a certain way. With books like these the authors have already decided how you should feel, and they spend the majority of their pages detailing how you should think, so you have to be careful to make sure you go through the process of puzzling out opinions for yourself.
Sister Prejean did not change my opinion on the death penalty, though that is probably partly due to the fact that I mostly agree with her. Even a .01 percent chance that the state is killing an innocent person is too high. Right now I’m thinking that the death penalty should be illegalized based solely on the chance that an innocent person could be killed. However, I do not necessarily agree with her that all human beings have a dignity worth respecting. Ted Bundy took sick pleasure out of killing and sodomizing dozens of women. What human dignity is there in a man that has made himself a monster? Keeping people like him alive, in my opinion, would be the necessary price of ensuring that no one innocent was killed, not a reason for eliminating the death penalty in itself.
William, I fully agree with your comments. I don’t know numbers and statistical facts but I know that keeping people like Ted Bundy alive is expensive. People who I believe gave up their rights, stated in Article 3 and 5 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, when they chose to take away other peoples life and participated in torture, cruelty, inhuman, and degrading treatment (122). I’m not saying I support the death penalty, I believe no one or group of people should have the right to take someone else’s life away, but I am in agreement that it is a “necessary price”.
My opinion before reading Sister Helen’s incredibly passionate and persuasive statements against the death penalty were already in agreement with hers so my opinion did not change.
For me, reading this book has changed me from a soft supporter of the death penalty to a person who sees life imprisonment as a safer and possibly more just alternative.
Mainly what swayed me was the revelation that as a tool, the death penalty was failing to deter crimes any more than life imprisonment. What really clinched the argument against the death penalty for me were the ways injustice was systematically carried out in the justice system to further push political agenda or preserve a region’s penchant of targeting of minority groups.
I opened this book well aware that Sr. Helen Prejean had her own agenda. To further explore the point William makes, I think the first questions a reader should ask when they look at the title of this book is “Wrongful according to who?”. Sister Prejean? The Justice System? God? Someone else? Some sections of the book were blatant emotional appeals while other sections were consistently supported by research. Sister Prejean fully utilizes her literary arsenal to make her case, which works in her favor and encourages readers to reexamine their positions on this issue.
Reading this book has solidified my opposition to the death penalty. Before, my opposition was mostly based on moral grounds, but I feel now like I have a more solid grasp of facts — about racial prejudice, the lack of effective defense for the poor, geographical bias, the “petty procedural barriers” in the justice system, etc. — to back up my belief. Reading that only 2% of murderers are sentenced to death was especially shocking to me. Those 2% have supposedly committed the “worst of the worst” crimes, but the justice system has failed to outline objective criteria for such crimes. Without objective criteria for who deserves imprisonment and who deserves death, I don’t understand how the death penalty can be logically justified. From a financial standpoint, I also agree with Sr. Helen that the amount of money spent on executions — about two to three times the cost of life imprisonment — would be better spent on rehabilitation and anticrime programs.
As some of you have mentioned here and on other discussion questions, this book has made me seriously question the fairness and effectiveness of our justice system. I wasn’t completely naive about its flaws, but I am more convinced now that reforms are necessary. In reading about Colorado’s public defense system, though, I was impressed that they only hire lawyers who want to dedicate their careers to public defense. It seem like Colorado would serve as a good model for reforms in other parts of the country, particularly the South.
To comment on Whesley’s point: During high school, I was a member of my school’s Mock Trial Team. This is basically students competing against other schools in acting out fictionalized court cases. The witnesses, lawyers, time clerks, and bailiffs are all portrayed by students. The teams spend months studying the packet they are given describing the case in as full of detail as it can be described. Witnesses spend these months memorizing their witness statements and making sure they have all their facts right, and lawyers spend their time writing questions for their witnesses and building their cases against the opposing side, whichever side that may be. As an expert witness for the prosecution of one of these cases, I found myself attempting to memorize plenty of medical terms to explain the assault that occurred in the case. As I consulted with the prosecuting attorney that I would be performing with, he would tell me exactly how he wanted me to answer a question, so it would lead seamlessly into the next question and would build up credibility for the prosecution. As I read this discussion thread, the idea was founded in my mind that deliberate “coaching” of witnesses not only happens in high school competitions, but also in real life court cases, which was shown by Sister Prejean in The Death of Innocents. This topic is heavily covered on all of those law TV shows, and there is no way that they can just make that up out of thin air. I’m not trying to say that every prosecution lawyer does this, but it does happen on some occasions.
Anyway, I should probably answer the question posed at the beginning of this thread. Before reading this book, I figured that keeping death row inmates alive was always the better option. The way I saw it was that if they did do it, they would have to live with what they did the rest of their lives instead of getting the coward’s way out in death. When a face was put to the vague term of “death row inmates,” my opinions changed. For instance, in 2002, a pregnant woman, Laci Peterson, was murdered by her husband who lived just miles from me. As a nine-year-old boy, I was infuriated. I wanted this evil man to die for doing what he did to that woman, and rejoiced at his sentence of the death penalty. As I read this book, though. I realized that this man, who was portrayed by the media as being “evil,” had a background story to his life, too, just like Dobie Williams and Joseph O’Dell. Even if I am so sure that Scott Peterson killed his wife, and even though both Sister Prejean and I are so unsure that Williams and O’Dell committed their crimes, there are people who consider these people one in the same, since they were all convicted. Therefore, they all should have the same punishment, which deep in my heart I believe is life.
More or less, what I am trying to get at in this is that there are two sides to each story, may that story be the story of the court case I acted out in high school, or the court case of Scott Peterson which sentenced him to death. Since, unfortunately, the justice system the United States has today cannot show both sides of a case in their entirety, I feel as if life is a better option than death. The only person who knows a person’s whole story is that person alone.
Before reading this book, I didn’t really have much of an opinion on capital punishment. On one hand I understood that there are reasons for it and that it does serve a purpose, but on the other hand, I could never quite justify it since I didn’t really see what gave the government more right than anyone else to decide who should live and who should die. As I read this book I do have to say that my opinions have become more anti-capital punishment than not. What really made up my mind was the it seemed that the government could not guarantee a fair trial. In the both Dobbie and O’Dell’s case, it seemed clear that their trial was not conducted at a level that I think anyone would consider fair. I also agree with Lisa that the fact that there is no standardized way to decide what kind of crimes deserve the death penalty makes the death penalty unjustified.
However, I also agree with Tyler since I to was concerned about her credibility. I came into the book excepting bias, but while I wouldn’t necessarily say that she didn’t document her facts well, I do think that this book did contain more partial or skewed facts than I expected. One thing that struck me in particular was Prejean’s use of the bar graph showing the number of deaths per area. First she had the data separated by area (such as North or South) but then she put two states as the last column. By changing the way that she was categorizing the data from area to states in the middle of the graph she threw everything she was trying to say up in the air, since that graph could have easily been skewed to make it seem like there are more deaths than their actually are. After all, you cannot tell if the two southern states she separates into their own column are also included in the South column. After this I knew that I need to be a bit cautious of what she wrote.
As a few others have mentioned at this point, I started this book with a relatively open mind as to my position on the death penalty. Upon completing the book, which yes, is obviously one-sided (it would have been interesting to read a companion novel that was pro death penalty), I am starting to think I am on the side of life in prison without parole.
More than influencing me against the death penalty, like Lisa and others, Prejean reinforced my skepticism of our justice system and my frustration that there doesn’t seem to be a fool proof way to determine the guilty from the innocent. It brought back a question that I have pondered as to whether the death penalty is truly justice or is it revenge? And is there really a line between the two? I think if there is a line between the two it must be incredibly thin because when I try to rationalize the difference between justice and revenge I can’t come to a concrete answer other than the fact that they are two words with similar meanings but different connotations. However, with that said I do believe in a justice system that enforces laws for the safety of the population and disciplines those who break them (so yes, I guess I believe in revenge), I just wonder at the effectiveness and “right-ness” of the system.
Needless to say I will no longer be a citizen who blindly and naively believes the courts make the best, unbiased, and completely right decisions–after all the justices and judges and jurors are only human and are bound to make “wrong” decisions in the view of at least one person–herein lies why I don’t think we can ever have a perfect justice system.
Reading this book made me think less about the how bad the death penalty is, and more about how all the flaws that Sister Prejean hates come from the base of the judicial system. My pro-death stance has not changed. I’m more interested in learning about how many people have been sentenced to life in prison without parole when they were innocent or even just a couple of years.
The stark racism of the south, the crappy defense lawyers, and the political agendas of everyone involved in the trial do not disappear in cases that are not about life in death. Juries from deep south dealing with a small burglary case are still going to be just as undereducated and easily swayed as those in Dobie’s.
I’m very disappointed we didn’t read another book along with this one, because there’s not a whole lot of debate on if killing innocent people is wrong. And without other examples of death row inmates, there’s no wonder nearly everyone on this forum is now against the death penalty. All my friends are telling me that after reading the Death of Innocents I have to read In Cold Blood. So anyone looking for a companion book could pick that up.
Like many others, I didn’t have a strong opinion on the death penalty simply because I had never seriously considered it before. At first, I had a very hard time reading because of Prejean’s heavy bias. The opening stories did illuminate some valid points on the flaws of the justice system but I felt like they were oversaturated with pathos. This made me much less receptive to her argument simply because I thought it was too much.
What eventually convinced me to be against capital punishment were the arguments relating to “due process” and “equal justice under the law”. The fact that geography and the people involved with the trial, particularly the prosecuters and defense attorneys, had such a large role in determining whether or not a death sentence was even proposed was appalling. That is not equality. Those are severe cases of “wrong place at the wrong time”, but also with the wrong people and the wrong amount of money.
Justice should not hinge on these variables. Obviously as humans, there will be some errors, some discrepancies in the way justice, particularly as outlined by the Constitution, is meted out. But the flaws that Sister Helen points out in the way courts are run are inexcusable in my eyes. As this is something I haven’t seriously considered before, I would say that my opinion on this was formed rather than changed.
I started out with a rather undecided view of the death penalty, and I have to say that The Death of Innocents only succeeded in making my opinion more uncertain. Tyler and Whesley bring up very good points when they bring up that Sister Helen Prejean strays far from expressing an even treatment of all sides. Obviously that approach is to be assumed in a book of this nature, but that tactic ended up dominating my entire reading of it. I couldn’t help seeing how often there were pure emotional appeals or insinuating accusations. In both accounts of Dobie Williams and Joseph O’Dell, she presents every detail of their cases as if the reader is the new jury and she is the competent defense the accused never got. While this may be cathartic to a degree, the reader is placed in a position where they have to now take her word on all the details that she presents, which is little more convincing in itself than the tactics that the original trials seem to have employed.
While it is clear that the justice system greatly failed these two men, this book does little to show where exactly the flaw in that system is (apart from the death penalty itself). However, if it did change my opinion on anything, it would be in regards to the current appeals system. Like Sister Prejean says of herself in the book, I previously had more faith in the appeals system to root out those people who were wrongly convicted, but that evidently is not the case. Overall, that has to be the major benefit that I got out of this book, a more accurate view of the fact that the system is flawed.
Before I rad this book, I will admitt, I did not put much thought into the death penalty. This book has openned my mind and heart to the subject. However, even after becoming aware of the injustices of O’Dell and Dobie, I am still very conflicted about my feelings. Yes, innocent people should not be killed, but what about those who do kill? I just do not know at this time.
I am one more person who opened this book somewhat undecided about the death penalty. Because capital punishment does not directly affect me I had not given it much thought. When I was younger it seemed perfectly reasonable to execute a murderer – i.e. “a life for a life”. However, I was intrigued by a speech given by Prejean in which she says:
“People that do terrible crimes in the books of Justice – we can say ‘Yeah but they deserved to die.’ But here’s our question: ‘Who deserves to kill them? What happens to us when we get involved in this thing of killing?”
After reading Death of Innocents I am now against the death penalty. I have realized my conscience and religion does not allow me to kill a person, no matter how terrible. Even if our society executed a criminal 100 times as abhorrent as Ted Bundy, Al Capone, or Gary Ridgway (“The Green River Killer”), what it do to us when we take a life? How does it affect us, even in the deep recesses of our subconscious, to know that we were the ones who irreversibly pulled that switch or pushed that button?
I agree with William that our judicial system should not allow even the slightest chance of incarcerating/killing an innocent person. Allowing for the possibility of injustice, even in the slightest way, could be a slippery slope. How much should we tolerate?
I used to have complete trust in our judicial system but now I am skeptical. I did not know there could exist lawyers who slept through trials (209) and didn’t even bother to contact their clients before trial (197). Prejean does state that these occurrences are not the norm but it makes me cringe to imagine being represented by such an inept and seemingly apathetic counsel.
Prejean will inevitably bring bias to the book. However, as several others have stated she uses many facts and objective data that lessen the extent of her subjectivity. Therefore although she is obviously siding with the inmates, her overall presentation of the statistics and evidence is essentially sound. That being said as critical readers we shouldn’t treat everything she says at face-value. It doesn’t hurt to keep a grain of salt handy. I will say that she did not do well to support her stance by mentioning the Baldus study. She claims it provided irrefutable data that what “quite prominently” affected the implementation of death sentences was not “circumstances surrounding a murder” but race (213). She gives the Baldus study more credit than I think it deserves because although it was the most comprehensive of its kind (212) it was restricted to Georgia.
Overall, Prejean presented adequately reliable evidence that turned me against capital punishment. I was reminded me of a quote I heard once before that now sums up my thoughts on the practice. I don’t remember exactly how it goes but it went something like this: “You have the power to take a life when you have the power to replace that life. That is, when you can create a life from nothing.”
My opinion on the death penalty has not changed, only strengthened. I started out against the death penalty without any real solid reason why. Prejean succeeded in showing exactly why she thinks the death penalty is wrong and I agree with her on most points. What really pushed me over the edge, though was when she showed how miserably the justice system was failing innocent people. In the O’Dell case when he is forced to be his own lawyer because his lawyer was feeding strategies to the prosecution, I couldn’t believe it. And then higher courts ruled that his right to counsel hadn’t been violated? Seriously? And then when Prejean listed other cases in which defense attorneys had been drunk or high in the courtroom, but those defendants definitely had adequate counsel… really? It made me angry to think we even have ‘right to counsel’ but don’t actually enforce it…
I as well had not looked at the Death Penalty much before this book, but now I have an opinion. I feel like I haven’t FORMED an opinion per se, but rather uncovered one I already had. I feel that the Death Penalty is unjustified no matter the crime. Because one, does that make us any better than the killer? And two, killing the killer gives them no chance for remorse. Murder is a life choice that–while extremely terrible–is just a mistake that an individual has made. Nobody has someone telling them what to do in their heart, they have to make all decisions for themselves, ultimately. And the mistake of murder is just an amplification of the mistake of saying something hurtful to someone. Everyone has the ability to become a good person, no matter what they’ve done in the past. As for “protecting society,” the Death Penalty sets a precedent in society that makes death seem like more of a viable option. “They kill people, why can’t I?” Also, I’m confident in our jail system that imprisoning someone for life versus killing them is not risking the end of the world.
Generally, I am against the death penalty. I believe no one person should be able to decide who should be sentenced to death. There are so many factors that change individual’s opinions. In fact there are too many. As human beings we are not perfect. Our experiences, prejudices, religious and spiritual beliefs will always influence the way we perceive certain events. The culture in the South is much different than the culture in the East or the Midwest. The way we were raised, the values that our parents have emphasized have shaped our moral values we each hold. Sister Prejean presents all of these factors throughout the novel, clearly evidencing how simple, how easy, it is to kill a human being. One individual’s opinion on how the Constitution should be interpreted or how the Bible should be read can end a person’s life, guilty or innocent. I see this as an abuse of power. It should not be the decision of one individual.
However, after reading all the posts on this discussion page, I am still confused. It is important to protect society from dangerous individuals. I believe a sentence of life without parole is a suitable alternative to a death sentence. However, when does life without parole become a burden on the people it is keeping safe? I was appalled at the millions prosecutors and the states spend on trials. Killing a person, especially one that has committed a heinous crime, should not cost taxpayers millions of dollars. But if every murderer was sentenced to life on parole, wouldn’t the expenses eventually add up to the same amount?
But the system is flawed. As Lisa stated, only 2% of murderers are sentenced to death. There are no consistent ways to hand out a death sentence. No guidelines; no checks and balances. It seems we only have discrimination, political agendas, bias and imperfect human beings. I was not naïve about our justice system. It can never be perfect. But I feel like there is so much we can change. After reading this novel, I have simply formed a more solid opinion. Until the justice system can find a consistent set of guidelines to sentence a man or woman to death, I believe the death penalty should be abolished. The fact that innocent people are being subject to the horrors of the “machinery of death” should be enough to begin to create change. I cannot say whether a person deserves to die or not. But it should not be left up to a small group of people to make that decision either.
I will start by saying that when I started reading this book, I was mostly supportive of the death penalty. I think that stance comes partially from my family background, as my parents and older siblings are all supportive of death over life sentences. That being said, I have always been wary of the fact that with the death penalty, as with all punishments including jail time, comes the risk of punishing the wrong people. Up until recently I have been fairly trusting in our justice system, believing that a minimal number of innocent people were being punished instead of the guilty. While reading this book, I have come to question that trust. I do still believe that our justice system does for the most part convict the guilty and spare the innocent, but I have definitely begun to take notice of injustices taking place right under our noses.
As anyone reading this can probably tell, I do still have a lot of conflicting opinions flying around. I will say that my opinion has changed though. I had chosen a side before, and now I find myself very undecided. I can say with conviction though that Sister Helen Prejean did little to change my mind. Reading her book, I felt so pressured to be appalled and outraged at the injustices occurring that I felt almost suffocated under her constant attacks against anyone who has even an inkling of support for the death penalty. I can understand her passion and her desire to stir up emotion and action in her readers, but I think she went past being persuasive all the way to being ineffective. She gives her readers no room to waiver or to form their own thoughts. She bundles up her opinions in a nice little package, and hands them to you when you finish reading. I was hoping to find a story that would make me think and make me question every little detail; instead, I was handed a point of view on a topic and expected to accept it.
Sitting here now, I have to agree with Tyler’s first post. I am no more convinced now to completely abolish the death penalty than I was before. My change in opinion is due only to the stories of the two men told by Sister Prejean. I cannot be sure now whether they were innocent or guilty, and I don’t think it is up to me (or Sister Prejean for that matter) to guess at their guilt or innocence. I felt sorry for them both mainly, I think, because it is hard to read about or see the death of another human being. In my support of the death penalty, I had never really thought about the actual people being put to death, or their families and friends. They were always just faceless killers or rapists. It is hard for me now to support their deaths when I have the scene of Dobie and his mother stuck in my head. I cannot say that I want to abolish the death penalty, but I cannot say that I support it either. As usual, I am hopelessly undecided.
Before I started reading The Death of Innocents, I had a fairly undecided opinion about capital punishment. I took an Ethics class during my senior year at the Catholic high school that I attended and we had a unit on capital punishment. We often debated the issue and even after the class was over I still didn’t have a solid opinion on capital punishment. Do people that have killed others deserve to die? If they do, then capital punishment seems to be the answer to murderers. However, the issue of innocents being executed still remains. This point is what had always bothered me about capital punishment and had led to me being undecided about it.
While reading Sister Helen Prejean’s passionate account of the death of two innocent men, I was able to form some conclusions for myself. I believe that if someone has taken a life from another that they do not deserve to live, even in prison for life because they will be able to do simple things that their victim never will: eat, talk, read, visit with family, etc. However, the problem with this opinion/belief is that there is always the risk of innocent people being executed. I am obviously against the death of innocent people and because our justice system is seriously flawed then there is no way of knowing 100% that someone is innocent or guilty. After reading the book, I am very skeptical of our justice system and based on Sister Helen Prejean’s facts about the trials, I believe that our justice system is very corrupt and uncaring.
Therefore, my opinion on the death penalty is that people who have committed the terrible crime of killing another person should not be allowed to live, but because there is absolutely no way for our justice system to know if people are actually innocent or guilty then the death penalty should not be used in the United States. Instead, life in prison without parole should be used for those who have killed others.
I also cannot believe the injustice done to Joseph O’Dell. To me, the worst part was Paul Ray, the lawyer who clearly plotted against his client with the prosecution. After being fired, the fact that he was reappointed by the state multiple times shows that the judicial system was simply out to get O’Dell, no matter what; innocent or not. Also, the fact that O’Dell was willing to represent himself in court, without a lawyer, and gave his testimony based on fact; the size of the Camaro he owns, the clothing he wore (especially the shoes which were have said DID NOT match), the location, the Type-O blood sample (which happens to be the most common blood type) which should have proved his innocents if the courts simply took the time to acknowledge DNA tests.
I came into my junior year in high school with limited knowledge on the death penalty, and therefore my opinion on criminal justice and capital punishment was not very concrete. In my junior year I read the book Dead Man Walking by Sister Helen Prejean. That story was very different and yet very similar to her next book the Death of Innocent. It was different because in this book all of the death row inmates were innocent. In Dead Man Walking the reader had to deal with his or her own opinions of the death penalty under the worst possible conditions, someone who truly had committed a capital offence. In Dead Man Walking there was an inmate that she spiritually advised for that in my opinion given the facts was innocent. The first time reading that book made me wonder if humans could make a decision like that without being 100% sure of a man’s guilt if we should have the power to make that decision. Sister Helen’s book The Death of Innocents made my conscious even more confident that unless we can fix our justice system capital punishment should not be allowed.
When America was created our founding fathers created a system with checks and balances and three divisions of power in the three main branches the executive, the legislative, and the judicial branch. The executive branch was suppose to centralize power and give the nation a leader, but the founding fathers feared a duplication of the monarchy they just fought bitterly to exorcise themselves from and therefore put a term limit on the president only allowing him or her to stay in office for four years without re-election. The legislative branch was also given similar term restraints making sure they did not abuse their powers of law making. However, the judicial branch was given no such restraints because the founding fathers did not want the fear of re-election to cloud the judge’s view of the facts and the truth of someone’s crimes. Today our Supreme Court judges are still appointed by the president for life, but in many state and federal courts the judges are elected to their positions. In The Death of Innocents Sister Helen shows how judges in districts who actively support capital punishment always had a judge who found a way to sentence the death penalty whenever possible. Especially in the South, also called the Death Belt by Sister Helen, judges hardly ever grant appeals or stays of execution, and the Governors rarely grant pardons.
In our current judicial system capital punishment should not be allowed if we can not filter between the innocent and the guilty. If somehow we could duplicate the Supreme Court system and appoint judges for life at all levels then capital punishment might be allowed to return. I come from a Catholic School, and the opinion of capital punishment in the Catholic Church is that condemning someone to death is only allowed if that country cannot safely and securely imprison that person for life, and therefore fears for the safety of others. Lately, the Pope and other highly appointed Cardinals have been speaking out to back Sister Helen to completely eliminate the death penalty. I feel confident in our prison systems and their security, however, anything built by man can also be escaped by man. I feel in certain situations the best action to be taken is still capital punishment. However, there can be no doubt of that person’s guilt for that action to be true and all possible measures must be taken to ensure that he or she is given a fair and impartial trial.
Like many people in this discussion I went into Death of Innocents on the pro-death penalty side of the issue. After reading the book however, I found myself in support of abolishment. My feet are not firmly planted and I am still open to discussion and arguments for both sides. In principle I support the death penalty, mostly as a means of deterring future crimes of a similar nature. Having never experienced the murder of a loved one I am not particularly convinced by the revenge factor as a rationalization of murder, but I can see how a close relation to the victim could lead to strong motivation. For me the key factors in causing me to defect to the anti-death side are the numbers of innocents who are likely executed yearly and the randomness of the penalty. The former could be prevented by legislation that gives defense a better chance of proving innocence; the latter however is the result of a justice system being run by human beings. It would be impossible to eliminate all prejudice from the system without replacing everyone involved with robots. People, whether consciously or not, have biases that lead them to act strongly, potentially ignoring important factors when pursuing capital punishment. The fact that one person could receive the death penalty for a crime, while someone else would be granted life imprisonment for a similar crime leads me to agree that the death penalty is unconstitutional in the same way that “separate but equal” facilities were found to be unconstitutional.
As yet another person who started this reading without a strong stance either way, the first two segments alone (about Dobie Williams and Joseph O’Dell) were enough to persuade me that the death penalty should be illegal. That two men, with evidence suggesting that their guilt, at the least, was extremely dubious, could be executed by the government is unacceptable. Regardless of whether or not I personally believe that murderers deserve to die, the potential for executing the innocent is unacceptable at any level. The pathos-laden persuasion that Prejean utilized, as well as the deviations into theology and moral arguments, weren’t necessary for me, nor particularly effective – I could never decide whether or not someone deserved to die, but the facts of their cases (O’Dell’s appeal being denied based on a mistyped word, the denial of DNA testing to support his case, and the assigned defender who worked against him) speak for themselves. Even if those two cases were the only exceptions in thousands, the chance is too great. Humans will never be perfect and never be able to mete out perfect and exact justice – and because the function of the government is to protect its citizens, it should not have the power to decide which ones die with the potential for a mistake that grievous.
When I began reading The Death of Innocents, I held the same belief that I still have after finishing it; the death penalty is morally wrong as well as ineffective in preventing future crime. That being said, my opinions did change towards the American justice system as a whole after reading Sister Prejean’s book. This system is widely regarded as the most fair and decent of any around the world, allowing persons rights considered fundamental to our “land of the free”. While I was aware that the criminal justice system in the U.S. is not as just and equal as our constitution implies, I found myself shocked and appalled at the hideous flaws Sister Prejean exposes, specifically those surrounding the death penalty. The real issue, in my opinion, is not whether or not the death penalty is morally right or wrong, but whether our criminal justice system is fit to be carrying out indictments of life and death when it is so obviously biased and corrupt. When defense representatives can legally fall asleep in court and still be deemed to be doing their job by a judge, something is seriously wrong. When the vast majority of all persons sentenced to death are black males in the south, equality is clearly not being practised. When evidence supporting a person’s innocence is witheld because of the court’s arbitrary decisions not to allow it, reform is undeniably necessary.
Before reading this book I felt that the death penalty was a good way to punish those who have committed a horrible crime. I agree with Audrey though because if innocent people are going to be killed the death penalty should be removed. We should not take the chance to risk the lives of innocents just to kill those who did a horrible crime. Though, I don’t feel that people who commited a horrible crime should live it was horrible hearing the stories of Joseph and Dobie and realizing that even after all the obvious faults in the reasoning of the government and lawyers they were still killed. If this is something that would continue happening then the death penalty is not something that should stay in place.
Honestly, prior to reading this book I had little concept of the death penalty being controversial. Thus, I was for it, lackadaisically regarding it as an exception to Mohandas Gandhi’s famous mantra, “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind”. Little did I know that I was, in a different sense, blind. Blind not only to what I realize now to be the horrifying wrong that is the death penalty, but to the ironic injustice of our nation’s criminal justice system. The Death of Innocents irreversibly altered my stance on both matters. I can now say, with confidence, that I am against the death penalty and also incredibly critical of how our criminal justice system executes its cases (bad pun slightly intended). Obliviously, I had believed that the death penalty might be justified economically. To hear from Sister Prejean that it failed in that department inflicted the first blow. The second blow was dealt after learning that an incredible number of other countries had already deemed it illegal. Wrong in the eyes of other countries, some seen as considerably less progressive than our nation, but not wrong in the eyes of the United States? How could that be right? As you can probably tell, I , like others have expressed, was moved more by Prejean’s exposé on our criminal justice system’s inexcusable flaws more than anything else. Beforehand, I understood that any establishment run by humans has the propensity to be just as flawed, if not more flawed, than humans themselves. Therefore, I was never stunned to hear of the occasional, unintentional mistake within the American courts. However, gaining knowledge of how the system operated so ludicrously stringent shocked me, and as a result, foritified my growing opposition against the death penalty. Why does justice need a deadline? Why does a mere typo have the possible power to determine the fate of a human being? Shouldn’t the guarantee of justice be elastic in a system that is without a reasonable doubt marred by human imperfection? It simply baffles me that the chief purpose of our justice system, establishing and ensuring justice, is so easily undermined by petty obstacles set forth by the establishment itself. Then, the irreparable damage came. Learning of the proven inconsistency of the distribution of the death penalty regionally and demographically sickened me, to say the least. Equality for all? Hardly. Corruption for minorities, substantially in the South? Nearly guaranteed. This, above all Prejean exposed, swayed my previous conceptions the greatest. When injustice is present within the individuals bestowed with the power of serving justice to all, how can the lives of an individual, guilty or not, be put into their hands? The irony pains me.
Although disagreements over the effects of this book do exist, I found that (and I feel that all can agree) The Death of Innocents, while not necessarily a life-changing experience, does provoke a tremendous amount of reflection and thought from its’ reader. The ability to question a system so deeply rooted in human tradition, such as the death penalty, is what makes a great piece of work, whether it be in the form of a film, a book, music, etc. That being said, there are obvious points during which Sister Helen Prejean seems to be so enthralled in her own beliefs that she poses biased points with absurd and subjective logic (ie, her persistent and occasionally unfounded denigration of prosecuting attorneys). The very attorneys that Prejean chooses to bash are no less human than you and I. Some may be selfish, but that is a human quality. In this regard, I agree with some of what Tyler and Whesley (and others) have emphasized. Each and every passionate argument must be taken with a grain of salt. That is, we cannot believe everything that is thrown in our direction.
As I originally began to state, however, before I provided a counterargument for my own shift in thought, The Death of Innocents forces its reader (typified by the indifferent supporter of the current American justice system) to challenge his/her own presupposed opinion or lack thereof and formulate a more polarized judgment concerning, above all else, the value of a human life. It is quite obvious why Helen Prejean is able to make such an impact: she allows one to relate to the lives of men previously thought to be horrible and deserving of death. It is often convenient for me (for anyone) to take the easier route and take up a moderate stance rather than taking the time to question a belief supported by much of society. At the very least though, this book helped me to step away from my unwillingness to think for myself. One line in particular swayed my opinion. “If he dies, he will not simply die, he will be killed—which is not, I believe, God’s will and must be resisted fiercely and actively every step of the way.”
It is probably obvious that I went from being indifferent, or even mildly in support of the death penalty, to agreeing with many of the ideals that Prejean placed down for her reader to judge. It is obvious that the killing of an innocent individual is a heinous act. The larger issue, however, is that whether or not a state is justified in the killing of a guilty individual. Personally, I went from feeling that the punishment was only fair, to a deeper belief in the value of a human life regardless of atrocities committed.
I began this book without much interest in or solid information about the death penalty. The reality of its application today was shocking to me- I didn’t realize just how arbitrary this area of our justice system is. We are currently trusting our government with the responsibility of deciding whether certain citizens live or die, and after reading some key facts in this book, I believe this is a bad idea. Like several others have stated, it is unthinkable to consider even one innocent person being condemned due to politics, racial issues, or any other of the flaws in this system. I was also shocked to see that capital murder trials are so expensive! If it was far more costly to imprison someone for life (like I had vaguely imagined earlier) then I can see where I might have agreed that executing someone guilty of heinous crimes was better for everyone than keeping him alive at the cost of taxpayers. This is not the case, however, and I think life in prison is a far better alternative. Regarding the morality of the death penalty, I have not changed my opinion. I think it is morally right in certain cases to kill people for their crimes, but I do not have faith in this government to carry it out fairly or sensibly.
Like many others, I too approached this book with a limited knowledge of and impartial opinion toward the death penalty. I have personally never experienced it’s devastating effects, so I naturally inclined not to give it much attention. But I would definitely say that reading The Death of Innocents has provided a gateway of awakening for me. Sister Helen argues her case against the death penalty with flawless style and rhetoric. The way evidence was presented and used to justify her views, in my mind, seemed to leave not other correct opinion than her own. Morally speaking, there seemed to be no other “right way” other than hers. For example, if a defense attorney is incompetent, there should be no question about it that the defendant should be given a new one or receive a later case due to the effects of the attorney. Because of the way that facts were presented, I was swayed to Sister Helen’s side and now have an antiestablishment view toward the death penalty. It without a doubt is in need of a vast overhaul, if not total abolition.
Before reading the book I never felt that the death penalty was a viable punishment. There is no reason in my mind that would justify killing a person no matter what politicians and religious leaders say or quote. This book has just given me more reason to detest the death penalty. I had no idea before I read this book how the death penalty really worked other than that I knew that it killed people as a punishment for certain crimes. What this book has taught has not changed my opinion, but rather made me more outraged. Knowing that tax payers pay for such expensive trials, knowing that innocent men go away and are killed, knowing that jurors are lied to so that they are told to believe that the only way to keep society safe is by killing someone, and finally knowing what politicians and prosecutors will do to cover up truths.
Like many others on this page, I too went into this book rather indifferent and have come out opposed. However, my opposition to the death penalty is not on moral grounds. While I understand Sister Prejean’s argument that no one deserves the death penalty because it is cruel to those convicted, the book talks little about the suffering of the victims and their families. It is my opinion that those who commit truly heinous crimes, such as multiple murders or public terrorists like the unibomber, have left such atrocity and suffering that their actions merit the death penalty.
Where sister Prejean’s book most influenced me was not with its morality, but with its practice. It is nice to think that in a country like the United States of America, we could have a system of justice that truly practices equal justice for all, but as Prejean points out with the cases of Dobie and Joe O’Dell, this is simply not the case. Regardless of whether Dobie and/or Joe were innocent, their stories point out a clear prejudice in how the death penalty is practiced, and even more importantly, how defendants can be wrongly convicted due to an overly aggressive prosecutor or an incompetent defense attorney. It is my belief that one innocent death as a result of a flawed system is one too many, and that because the purity of judgement is easily tainted by prejudice, ambition, and corruption, the death penalty in practice should be abolished due to its ineffectiveness.
I would ask this: If we are TRULY to have a separation of church and state, does that mean that only atheists should be employed by the government?
Edward, I don’t have definitive answer for you and frankly if someone said they did I would say “You sir, are full of crap.” There is no way to “fix” society. I have absolutely no idea how to go about removing biased people from office, or any of that sort. I’m merely pointing out that they are there, and THEY are the reason the system does not work.
Similar to a number of my peers, I entered into ‘The Death of Innocents’ with a flimsy, partially-formed option regarding capital punishment. I have always felt that living with guilt is a far greater punishment for wrongdoing than death and my opinion in the respect remains unchanged. What changed for me was my opinion regarding the equity of the process as a whole. The racial disparity between the number of white people sentenced to death and the number of minority people sentenced to death was sickening. I do not believe that more murders are caused by racial minorities than by white majorities and I certainly do not believe that racial minorities are more deserving of capital punishment. I was astonished to learn that cases were being presented – consciously or subconsciously – under such pretenses. I did a bit of my own research before posting here to see if alterations – in either attitude or in law – had been made in the justice system since the book was published in 2005. Unfortunately and unsurprisingly, there have been no significant changes. A quick Google search yielded a 2010 study by the Washington Law Review that found that “[r]ace and place disparities persist in the administration of the federal death penalty” (490). I tried to add a link, but if that doesn’t work, Google “The Racial Geography of the Federal Death Penalty – Washington Law Review”. In addition to the study, there were two articles in the New York Times this morning about the role of race in capital punishment. One article was set in Georgia, the other in Texas. In both cases and black man was being tried for murder and was on death row, days away from the end. This is the issue, not the administration of the death penalty in general but the administration of the death penalty on minorities, on which my opinion has changed.
Initially, I began the book with the though that the death penalty wasn’t so bad. Although I felt it to be morally wrong I could sympathize with the hypothetical argument that someone, such as Dobie, who had an IQ that qualified him for mental retardation maybe should be sentenced to death due to the fact that he cannot benefit society. Yes, I understand that this is wrong but you have to agree that it is slightly logical.
As I read the stories of the other victims who were wrongly convicted my feelings didn’t change much. Of course if one were to be wrongly convicted then that individual should not be sentenced to death. I believe everybody sympathizes with that.
But, in my eyes the book did little to change my opinion that those guilty of murder should be sentenced to death. However, as I began the book I was also watching the show “Doctor Who”. If you’re unfamiliar with this show it is about this “alien” who is the last of his kind due to a war. Now, although an uncompassionate species destroyed everything the main character loved he continued to give second chances to the wrongdoers that he met during his travels. After watching “Doctor Who” and then reading the story about the father, who did not wish the death penalty upon the man that killed his child, I noticed that my feelings had changed. Any person no matter how hanous the crime no longer deserved death. Compared to how I felt after reading the first few stories to reading the final few stories I noticed that the book did not do much to sway my opinion that the death penalty should be intact for murderers. However, after watching “Doctor Who” I felt that I could sympathize alot more with the book and what the character’s were feeling as death entered into their lives. In tandem the two worked very well together to change my opinion that the death penalty should be abolished. But without the Doctor I feel that the Death of Innocent’s plea would have gone unanswered by my moral self.
Too bad that still leaves the problem that we have way to many people incarcerated….
I never truly gave the death penalty much thought due to the intangibility of my mind’s ability to grasp the slightest reality of such a punishment. Prior to reading The Death of Innocents, the death penalty was just the pairing of two words that never really sparked too much emotion – a phrase that was simply (and understandably) foreign to my eighteen years of life.
Sister Helen Prejean has shone light on the fact that “torture is legalized.” While reading about the gurney, the chamber, the lethal injections, the supporters of the death penalty…it all makes me feel uneasy. With the knowledge and first-hand experiences that the author provides, how could anyone consider the ‘machinery of death’ a tool to depict a righteous act of justice?
The lack of fairness regarding the death penalty came to be one of the key reasons that led me not support it. Like William said, “even a .01 percent chance that the state is killing an innocent person is too high.” There are too many flaws in the courtroom; in my mind, it correlates to the erroneous attempt of solidifying a study in social science. No matter how close the justice system is to proving an individual guilty, it seems unfeasible to sentence someone to death with such absolute assurance of their guiltiness. I agree that life in prison without parole is a perfectly suitable alternative to death, thus eliminating the hypocrisy of taking ‘an eye for an eye.’
As a society, we should promote the abolishment of the death sentence on the premise of the apparent flaws surrounding its accuracy. In reference to David Lawson, everyone “is a human being,” and no individual should be sentenced to death based on the judgments of others.
Before I read Death of Innocents, I was uncertain of my position, but leaned more towards being in favor of the death penalty. I had questioned the morality of it, but believed that a life for a life made sense. And, why would taxpayers want to fist over more money to support the lives of convicted murderers? I had no idea that only two percent or less of death sentences in 2002 were imposed on murderers. This knowledge was a shocking discovery for me. Were we executing fairly for the crime committed? And, what would make it right to kill certain convicted murderers if we gave the majority of other convicts with similar cases life without parole? I was also surprised to learn that executions cost two to three times as much as life imprisonment. Right away, I knew that the money saved from executions could be used to fund prevention programs, which, I believe, are one of the few actions we can conduct in order to reduce heinous crimes. Having previously doubted the moral justification of executions, these two details played a major part in revealing my belief that we should abolish the death penalty.
This book solidified my views on the death penalty. I came in against it, because I’m against the killing or imprisonment of human beings without giving them the opportunity or incentive to change their life around (I also came into this book against life without parole). In the end, I realized that the death penalty should be abolished because the state shouldn’t have the ability to determine whether its citizens have the right to live or die. There is just to much opportunity for corruption to overtake the system, whether it be via racism, socioeconomic disadvantage, or politics. Sentences of life with the ability of parole are by far the best option in my mind, because it allows for mistakes to be reversed and for prisoners to rehabilitate themselves and be reintegrated into society.
What this book did substantially change for me was the possible role that religion could play in shifting the mindsets of the faithful to encourage the abolition of the death penalty. I originally never contemplated the potential that religious pressure could play in positively shaping public policy (primarily because when religion gets involved in policy making, it generally doesn’t bring good results). The Catholic Church’s 180 on the death penalty will go a long way to advancing the cause of abolishing capitol punishment.
I have grown skeptical of our criminal justice system over the past few years as I have learned more about the way the system is meant to function, and the way it functions in actual practice.
It appears I am not alone in that I began this novel without strong views regarding the death penalty and how it is carried out in our criminal justice system. Just as Charlotte mentioned earlier, I too have held some underlying, and clearly unsubstantiated belief, that sentencing a guilty prisoner to death was a cheaper alternative to life in prison without parole. While I am unsure of where that belief had come from, it was something that, in the back of my mind, had allowed me to consider the death penalty as a necessary and just punishment.
This book presented me with many facts to consider for myself, the actual cost of a capital trial being one of them. Looking at the facts, I have certainly let go of my belief that death was a cheaper punishment. Many of the facts that Prejean presents were helpful in forming my own opinions; however, like many of you, I was always hesitant to accept all that was presented to me, because Prejean has such an agenda with this book. I was constantly on my guard as a reader, checking in with myself to see if I was simply believing all that I was told, following along with a well-pitched argument, or if I could stop for a moment and be critical of what I was being told.
I began to take everything with a grain of salt. Like others, I too felt that Prejean was trying to persuade me on an emotional level, and despite resisting that persuasion, and trying to maintain a little skepticism, I found it was impossible not to have an emotional response to this issue. Regardless of Prejean’s tactics, there was no way I could look at this issue and not feel something.
So, while the opinions I formed, based on fact and feelings, are against the death penalty, I also came to another conclusion. It is not necessarily bad to be persuaded on an emotional level. That is not to say that one shouldn’t puzzle out those feelings in his or her mind later while looking at the facts, but there is certainly a reason we humans can relate on an emotional level. Even though it may not be logical, and one may experience a response without having weighed out all the facts, the gut reaction we experience is something that I believe is important for each of us to acknowledge and trust. In addition to that visceral sense, one is still able to explore and reexamine the facts to find out what they think, alongside what it is that he or she feels immediately.
Of course, as an author Prejean is smart to target her readers emotionally, but simultaneously, how can this issue be looked at without emotion? Furthermore, isn’t emotion or a gut feeling exactly what sways a jury member, or a judge during a case, regardless of whether or not the information they are presented with is fact or biased by one side or the other? There is simply no way to take this emotional and visceral response out of human processes and systems, so to a certain degree, we may need to allow ourselves to be touched on this level by people who are passionate about what they believe in. It seems that by allowing a visceral human response to factor into our decision-making we may be able to make decisions that are morally sound and true to our own collective human nature.
Like many others, I did not have much of an opinion on the death penalty before reading this book. I honestly did not even know if Oregon used the death penalty. I found that they do, but not often at all. Growing up in Oregon I believe is one of the reasons I had not thought much about the death penalty, whereas if I had grown up in Texas for instance, it would have been something I most likely was in favor of.
After reading this book, I’m still not sure whether I am completely opposed or in favor of the death penalty, but I know that if innocent people are being killed then it is not being used in the proper way, and therefore the system should be changed. One of the biggest things I found that bothered me about the death penalty, and in the stories that were told, was that people of color or that were in poverty were easy targets and couldn’t seem to get a good lawyer or get things to go in their favor no matter what. That is not how the law works, so in my opinion, if the courts cannot impose the law without discrimination, or make sure that the people they are killing are one hundred percent guilty, then the death penalty should not be used.
My opinion has mostly remained the same, as I have never believed that the death penalty was right or just. However, this novel has made the issue much more potent and real to me. It also enlightened me to the corruption in the system that I had never realized existed, and one day I hope I have the opportunity to help change it.
During the past school year, I spent a fair amount of time studying the United States Judicial System. Before reading The Death of Innocents, I knew that there were good and bad sides to the system; aspects beneficial to our country, and sometimes adverse to justice. Our court system is organized as an adversarial system, meaning that a person only has to be proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. In most European countries, there is an inquisitorial system, where the judges actually spend time investigating the case to discover the truth about a situation or crime. Over the years, our court systems have greatly improved, but if this book showed me anything, it is that our justice system still has immense flaws. The death penalty is already a questionable practice when a person is truly guilty of heinous crime. I don’t think anyone should think lightly of ending a human being’s life. But when the death penalty is ending the lives of innocent people, something is seriously wrong; especially when the victims have been condemned due greatly to prejudices. Our justice system has improved greatly throughout the years, but Sister Helen has made me realize it still has a long, long, way to go for our country to be a place of true equality and justice for all.
I was against the death penalty before I read this book, mostly because I thought killing was wrong. But now it’s the discrepancies in our doling out of the death penalty that most appalls me. “Equal justice under law” doesn’t guarantee laws that we all approve of, but it does promise that the laws will be applied to all citizens equally. My views towards our justice system in general are what were most changed by reading this book. The continuation of the death penalty, coupled with our ineffective of our plea bargaining system, and many more issues that must exist that I’m not familiar with, make me lose confidence in our courts’s abilities to evolve as new problems surface
Saying my opinion on the death penalty changed during the course of reading this book wouldn’t be the best way to explain how this book changed me. Before reading it, I had little an opinion to give. I’d never had a meaningful experience with it, and they way I saw it was if someone killed another out of cold blood, then they didn’t deserve to live. I realize now how insensitive that was, and I can’t believe I was ever even apathetic about the death penalty. Particularly after seeing how the lives of two innocent men were taken, in one case largely because of a racial issue, and a lack of desire from the court to grant him another appeal despite new analysis of evidence, I’ve come to understand how incredibly perverted our justice system must be. Innocent until proven guilty, that’s what we our justice system is based off of, not innocent until probably guilty. Sister Prejean has changed the way I look at our courts, and most importantly through her accounts of the finals days of these two men, she created in me a new comprehension of the wrongs the death penalty commits on our society.
Before reading this book and learning more about Sister Helen Prejean’s works, I disagreed with the death penalty merely because of my moral stance. This book has educated me not only of the social injustices that come with the death penalty, but also the corruption of our judicial system. It’s disturbing to know that the states which enforce the death penalty are also the states which formerly supported slavery, and that most of the prosecuted are of color. It also baffles me that our supposedly just and equal legal system can vary so greatly depending on region. My faith in our nations courts have decreased dramatically, and I now have a stronger opposition towards the death penalty in this country.
Before I read The Death of Innocents, I really didn’t know very much about the court systems or the death penalty. I didn’t pay much attention to the news about the death penalty debate or whether or not someone that was convicted of a crime was truly guilty or not. I never paid attention to the way an article in the news was written or conveyed…or looked for any biases in the writer’s approach. Like Sister Helen Prejean and many others, I assumed that the men and women that were executed were guilty of horrendous crimes such as murder, with a very small portion being innocent. As Sister Helen mentioned in the book, people think that our justice system is the best in the world and the words “equal justice under law” is inscribed on the portals of our Supreme Court building. I assumed that if we’ve made mistakes about the innocence of someone, it didn’t happen very often what with all of new technology in our modern world and the DNA testing that can be done. What I’ve learned from this book is that all of the changing technology in our world can’t help an innocent convict if people don’t change. For instance, the prosecutors and judges that find ways around the law and allow their biases to seep through to the justice system so often that it becomes normal and then denying that they are doing those things or stating that it cannot be change. But like Justice Thurgood Marshall stated, “The American people are largely unaware of the information critical to a judgment on the morality of the death penalty…If they were better informed they would consider it, shocking, unjust and unacceptable” (234). I believe that much of the issues in our government are largely due to the ignorance of the American public. With the government hiding information from the public to save its reputation, many Americans don’t have the time or don’t think twice about actually getting involved in their democracy. I think one of the reasons why the court system is able to do what Sister Helen has said they’ve done is because the public is unaware of it. Take, for instance, in chapter four, the state and federal courts denied David Lawson’s request to have his execution videotaped and broadcast stating that he “wanted the people of North Carolina to know they were killing a man” (264).
I really like Virany’s comment above about how our changed technology can’t help anyone if we don’t change as a race. I think that comment applies to a lot of the constitutional discussion that Prejean begins in the book. She talks about how the Constitution was written as a changeable document because the founders were aware that they would be unable to accomplish writing a document that could be permanent and last forever. This changeability is what has enabled our country to grow into what it is today, I definitely believe after reading this book that it’s time to re-evaluate the Constitution’s wording on the justice system and the death penalty itself. Our Constitution is meant to change with us, right now it sounds like it is a little behind when in comes to this issue.
Before i read this book i firmly believed in the ideology supporting the death penalty. Every time i watched a criminal justice show on TV and a man or woman was found guilty of a gruesome crime i never had a moments hesitation in condemning them to death. i never gave much thought in many of the points Prejean brings up.
One of the main points that really influenced my change in opinion was the fact that the United States justice system seems unable to implement the death penalty in a fair way. For one, how does one begin to create a criteria that separates a heinous crime from a non-heinous crime? I now believe that this can not be done. This inconsistency is an obvious flaw that, in my opinion, nullifies most arguments in support of the death penalty. this is where the social problems also began to affect my original opinions. How is it fair that a guilty poor African American man has a greater chance of being sentenced to death then a guilty rich Caucasian man? If the US can not find a way to implement the death penalty in a fair way then it should not practice it because it is too large of a responsibility.
Like many others, I was quite unaware of the debate on capital punishment and did not have a developed opinion. I did, however, believe that the death penalty should be completely abolished so I found myself agreeing with Prejean’s arguments. But I built that opinion solely on the bias that Virany addressed: that our nation’s justice system is “equal justice under the law.” I soon found myself baffled that there were actually innocent people being put to death without being given a proper hearing to prove their innocents. I was especially compelled when Prejean mentioned the corruption of many prosecutors who would plead for the death sentence simply for the sake of “winning big”, manipulating evidence and ultimately taking away all hope from helpless defendants. That is also a contributing factor to the arbitrary application of capital punishment, another compelling argument that Prejean opens up in her novel.
Overall, The Death of Innocents has caused me to re-think my opinions on the death sentence. While I initially agreed with Prejean, I wasn’t aware of the bigger picture. I agree with Kory and Schere that the constitution needs some serious re-evaluation if it is to be implemented fairly.
So before I read Prejean’s book my feelings were that your punishment should more or less match your offense. So the death penalty which punishes those who kill made good sense to me. Someone that deprives another of life should be dealt with. After the read my opinion is the same, those who murder an innocent person should be killed, it’s only fair after all, but after reading this book I realized what really mattered. Governments are always run by people that are not going to be particularly worried about the woes of a couple individuals, in fact in many politicians’ eyes the mere power of office is more important than serving the populace. In short, responsibilities cannot be trusted to officials that are willing to let an innocent person die. Now I’ll get to my change in feeling. The government cannot be allowed to administer the death penalty because the government will misuse that right and innocents will die. It’s a question of what we gain and what we lose, ok so we aren’t able to get rid of killers, but at least we aren’t killing innocents.
So before I read Prejean’s book my feelings were that your punishment should more or less match your offense. So the death penalty which punishes those who kill made good sense to me. Someone that deprives another of life should be dealt with. After the read my opinion is the same, those who murder an innocent person should be killed, it’s only fair after all, but after reading this book I realized what really mattered. Governments are always run by people that are not going to be particularly worried about the woes of a couple individuals, in fact in many politicians’ eyes the mere power of office is more important than serving the populace. In short, responsibilities cannot be trusted to officials that are willing to let an innocent person die. Now I’ll get to my change in feeling. The government cannot be allowed to administer the death penalty because the government will misuse that right and innocents will die. It’s a question of what we gain and what we lose, ok so we aren’t able to get rid of killers, but at least we aren’t killing innocents.
Before reading this novel, I was very much for Capital punishment and believed strongly in it as a form of justice. Though not merciful or even fair, I always thought it to be somewhat just which is what our law system is fundamentally based on upon. If you kill someone, you should lose your life: simple as that. However, after reading this novel it really opened my eyes to this flawed system. How can it be just when so many other variables come into play? Racism, quick assumptions, and the like all can contribute to the death of someone who may very well be innocent. That isn’t just. You can’t have a flawed system when it comes to taking the life of another human being. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s possible to be flawless when it comes to capital punishment and therefore, my opinion has changed. I no longer see Capital Punishment as acceptable or a just form of our justice system. I’m fortunate to have read this novel because sometimes it takes an inside look and a wide spectrum of human emotions to see a system for what it truly is.
I’ve always been firmly against the use of capital punishment. In my opinion, the death penalty is inhumane and falls under the definition of “cruel and unusual punishment.” Society currently has the means to protect itself against these dangerous individuals by means other than killing another person, and if such an option exists (such as sentencing someone to life without parole), why anyone choose to kill/murder another individual? Therefore, Prejan did not really change my opinion on capital punishment all that much. Her arguments and points simply reinforced my prior beliefs.
However, my opinion on the criminal justice system did change slightly. I had taken a introductory criminal law class at a summer program before, so I had a small amount of prior knowledge about the way the American justice system works. I was shocked at the poor procedure, weak prosecution, corruption, and blatant lying that Prejan described in the cases of Dobie Williams and Joseph O’Dell. I had always believed (and wanted to believe) that the justice system treated all people fairly, regardless of social class, race, creed, ethnicity, and belief. I’m well aware that these prejudices still exist in parts of society today, but I thought that of all places, it wouldn’t exist in the justice system in a country that prides itself on fairness and equality (especially considering the Civil Rights Movement was almost 50 years ago.) I am slightly more skeptical of the justice system than I was prior to reading this book, though I still believe (and want to believe) that it will treat every criminal as fairly as possible. Prejan just opened my eyes to the lack of equality that some people still receive from the government.
My opinion about criminal justice and capital punishment has not changed after reading the Death of Innocents. I admit that there are people who abuse their power to kill the innocents, but that does not mean the capital punishment itself is evil. It also does not give us permission to abolish it. For example, many countries do not allow gun possession to their citizens for safety purposes. Unfortunately, the prohibition of a gun possession leaves citizens with no power to protect themselves from the gangs and mafias who are ignorant towards the laws of their country and still have gun possessions. Having a gun itself is not evil; people who abuse it are evil. Therefore, I believe that although what people have done to Dobie Williams and Joseph O’Dell was not right, we should not abolish death sentencing.
The Death of Innocents made me reconsider my views of the death penalty and of the justice system. Before reading it, I believed that the courts almost always made the right decision and when they didn’t, it was because they had a legitimate reason (such as forensic methods not being advanced enough to read the evidence correctly). I hadn’t thought much about capital punishment but gave it’s use a vague and uninformed approval in certain cases.
Now I question how we can condone a punishment that sets us at the same level as the murderer. If a murderer is tried because he killed someone and then the justice system kills him, then shouldn’t the justice system be guilty of the same crime? We hold ourselves to different standards than than the people we persecute and that doesn’t seem right to me.
Death penalty proponents cite the old saying, “An eye for an eye,” to garner support, while conveniently forgetting its ending. Obviously, we are going blind if we cannot see that by executing criminals, we are also gouging eyes. The cycle of violence is being perpetuated and not to society’s benefit. In order to end this cycle, the justice system needs to show that it is above murder, even a legalized version, and that it is in no way acceptable, no matter who commits it, be it the individual or the government.
I agree with Mr. Caufield on the point that it is not possible to set a strict standard of heinous vs. non heinous. Every attorney, judge, or jury member is sure to have a slightly different idea of what constitutes a heinous crime. Crime is clearly to black and white as it comes in all forms with different results and intent. It was shocking to me to see how inconsistently the death penalty is carried out. Or rather, how consistently it is carried out in very biased and disconcerting ways. Sister Helen did an excellent job of pointing out the racism and geographical flaws in the death penalty and court systems. It was also very moving to read the accounts of two innocent people put to death by the state. Because of the above reasons, it seems that the death penalty is not executed in such a way that it can legally be upheld in our country. Therefore I say it must either be extremely reformed (which sounds nearly impossible) or put to death itself.
It’s important for anyone reading this comment to know that I do not support the death penalty. However, my main reason has less to do with mercy for those committing a crime, and more to do with the belief that we are incapable of accurately making the decision of whether a fellow human should live or die. At least a life in prison ensures that they will have a long time to try to prove their innocence if that is what they need.
I was deeply, emotionally touched by this book. I felt a strong connection to both men portrayed by Sister Prejean. Her attention to detail in citation also impressed me. With each new “fact” I felt more strongly that prosecutors were bad, our government was horribly flawed, and the justice system was a disgusting mess. Thankfully, I took a moment to step back. I reflected on Sister Prejean’s style, point, and procedure. With the facts she gives, it is obvious that something should change, and that we are killing innocent people whether we want to face it or not. But what I would really be interested in reading is a book with an opposite point of view.
Facts, statistics, and numbers are a tricky business. While they seem like finite evidence, they can still be slanted depending on circumstances in the research required to find them, or even in their presentation. I wonder as I read whether all statistics are honestly portrayed.
I think Sister Prejean is a skilled writer and artist. Art evokes emotion. she has definitely accomplished that. And I am thankful for her passion. Without a person in her position, doggedly pursuing reform, we would not have a working system. We NEED her. Unfortunately, though at this point many of us consider them the enemy, we need pro-death advocates just as much. Without them we lose democracy. We lose debate. We lose the opportunity to stretch ourselves as we are now in trying to take meaning from this book.
We would be foolish not to take this novel with a grain of salt. We would be foolish to ignore it’s idea’s. But the biggest thing I learned from this novel is that without Sister Prejean, and without our comprehension and discussion, our infinitely flawed system would have no foundation to repeatedly rebuild upon. Thank God we are arguing about it right now.
My view of the law system as a whole in America has never been all too favorable, what with knowing the flaws of human nature, so naturally I assumed that there were flaws in the system, specifically along the lines of corruption, bribery, etc. However, these views had never been grounded in concrete fact, but, were instead beliefs I had acquired after hearing horror stories about the criminal justice system from friends, family, and the news. After reading this book though, I realized the extent to which the flaws in the justice-and specifically criminal justice system-reaches, and can sadly say that my opinion of our government has just decreased. Although I knew that there were flaws in the criminal justice system and that some innocent people would be put behind bars while some guilty remained free, I had no idea that the ‘some’ I was thinking of was such an underestimate. Now when reading stories of people put in jail after being convicted in trail, I don’t immediately feel satisfaction at our justice system but question whether or not that person was innocent or not, and whether all the facts were laid out on the table.