PORTFOLIO Shelbi Roohms
Shelbi Roohms 2138 Woodston Dr. Round Rock ,Texas 78681 December 5, 2015 Beth Eakman Re St. Edward’s University 3001 South Congress Ave. Austin, TX 78704 Dear Beth, I would like to point out what a pleasure it has been to take your class. My writing skills have excelled under your instruction. I will show you my progress through an evaluation of my own papers throughout the year. I will compare my first paper of the year, the rhetorical analysis, and my last paper of the year, the research paper. Freshman Studies has opened my eyes to many new ideas and views about politics, religion, culture, and current issues. Through written composition ll, I have obtained skills that will allow me to express my own views and ideas about these subjects. I have improved my rhetoric skills since the beginning of the year by organizing my papers more neatly and effectively. My rhetorical analysis states the “context of this book is the major conflict occurring with police officers,” the jumps straight to how it “is relevant today because of events such as Walter Scott,” and lastly moves to the rhetorical questions the book poses. I made this transition in just three sentences. There was no flow or purpose to when I was giving the information to my audience. However, in my last research paper, I move smoothly from the number of innocent people being put away, to which kind of people are being put away, then to how that effects them. In this paper I placed my information and points strategically to get my main claim across more effectively. When I came into this class, I had very good ideas in my papers. However, my composition skills were what kept me from scoring a higher grade. I have fixed this problem by making my sentences more concise and my papers not as repetitive. I started out writing sentences such as, “Once people get on board with what Stevenson is arguing, everyone will know and might be convinced as well.” This sentence is very ambiguous and awkward to read. With help from the writing center and your instruction, I started to write sentences such as, “The Supreme Court would remove the possibility of mistakes if they eliminated the death penalty; helping the criminal justice system’s track record and saving lives.” My sentences became packed with more important information without being so long. The research that I use in my papers has become much more substantial and significant. The facts I decided to use at the end of the year supported my claim better than the research I was using in my rhetorical analysis. For example, I provided the fact “1 in 9 people on death row are innocent,” in my rhetorical analysis. This fact is
surprising, but it doesn’t go into any more depth than just that number. I didn’t explain where this fact was found or in what year this statistic was taken. I improved this skill by introducing facts like “In 2014, ‘Death sentences represent less than one-tenth of 1% of prison sentences in the United States (7), but they accounted for about 12% of known exonerations of innocent defendants from 1989 through early 2012 (2).’” Not only is the statistic much more in depth and reliable, but it is also backed up by where and when this was found. I learned how to critically read better and that allowed me to know how certain text was being used for a specific purpose. Learning how to recognize the purpose of the author’s actions increased the meaningfulness of my essays. I came into the class being able to critically read fairly well, yet I still improved so much in this area. I tired to do this in my first paper, when I said, “Stevenson uses logos to factually prove the detrimental error rate in death penalties.” This is a good start, but my claims became more effective when I learned how to add more detail. I finally got to the point where I was writing sentences such as “Racist bigotry in court officials caused the African American to be convicted over the other criminals. The criminal justice system feels pressure to find the perpetrator of the crime and their bias can get in the way when rushed to find the criminal.” My critical reading skills helped me explain quotes better because I can show how they are used to support a claim. Moral reasoning was a very hard thing for me to master. We had to practice explaining why we think something is ethical multiple times since our freshman theme was capital punishment. I learned that I needed to clearly state the problem and back up my position with facts and meaningful explanations. In my rhetorical analysis I said, “We as a society need to know that innocent people are being put to death so that we can demand change of the way evidence is sorted through, who is condemned to death row, and who walks.” I began using more intense language and threatening ultimatums to show the effects of the problem I was arguing. In my research paper I backed up my reasoning better when I said things such as, “these mistakes will start to be noticed more by the public. When this happens, the criminal justice system will start to lose power, authority, and credibility. The already weak relationship between the government and people has caused the effectiveness of the courts to dwindle quickly.” I have learned that, at St. Edwards especially, I need to be able to back up my opinion because there are so many different views here. I have already started using strategies from this class in my other classes. I used my composition and rhetoric skills in the paper I had to write for our freedom and rights class. I will need moral reasoning skills the rest of my life to be able to explain my point of view to people. Also I will never be able to ignore composition strategies in my writing ever again. Once a person learns something like that, they cannot stop thinking about it in their academic life. It has been a pleasure taking your class Beth. Sincerely, Shelbi Roohms
Shelbi Roohms Beth Eakman Re FSTY 1313.07 Fall 2015 Rhetorical Analysis
Millions of Innocent People Killed Constitutes the Death Penalty as Inhumane
In his book Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson argues that the death penalty should be abolished for a multitude of reasons. One of the main reasons is the number of innocent people that have been sentenced to death. He was effective at making this argument because he appeals to the reader’s sympathy, uses his credibility to make the reader believe him, and provides true facts to prove his point.
The context of this book is the major conflict occurring with police officers and if they are taking down and bringing in the right people. This book is relevant today because of events such as Walter Scott and many others. Just Mercy touches on the hard questions that these incidents propose. Is the law enforcement still racist today? Are police abusing their power? How corrupt is the criminal Justice system? The issues that are recapped in the book, are still big issues in today’s society, and, if anything, have become worse since the publication of this book. Also, in 2015 it is faster than ever to pass information on over the Internet and social media. Once people get on board with what Stevenson is arguing, everyone will know and might be convinced as well. Stevenson is targeting any semi-educated person who can vote and have a say in future policies and politics. The author wants the audience to be so disturbed that they demand change in the criminal justice system.
Just Mercy is a highly accessible non-fiction book written by an extremely qualified writer. This book should be taken into serious consideration due to the author’s credibility. He is the director for the Equal Justice Initiative in the heart of racism in Alabama. Stevenson was educated at Harvard and went to New York University Law School, so he is qualified to argue about these issues. He is also is a young lawyer and know what its like to be poor and a person of color. He has enough experience and knowledge to be able to accurately describe the problem in the justice system. His age allows him to relate to this generation of people in a way that will make them more likely to listen to his argument. Because of his personal experience with mistreatment, he is able to bring more justified opinions to the table.
Stevenson uses logos to factually prove the detrimental error rate in death penalties. He provides a statistic that says, “1 in 9 people on death row are innocent.” He proceeds to put this in perspective by saying that “we wouldn’t keep flying planes if 1 in every 9 planes that took off, crashed.” People may have their opinions on the morals of the death penalty, however numbers do not lie. By the author providing this statistic, even the readers who believe in the death penalty have to rethink the way it’s gone about. Reality of the error percentage strikes readers as Stevenson states “The number of death row prisoners in Alabama for whom we’d won relief reached one hundred” (297). This statistic in itself is an unacceptable problem. Also “several dozen people who had been wrongly condemned to death row had been freed before [Walter]” (242). If we are killing people, we need to be one hundred percent certain that they are guilty first.
Bryan Stevenson uses a pathological appeal by showing the effect of the death penalty on Walter after he got released. The author provides specific examples to appeal to the reader’s sympathy and feel the hurt of the wrongly accused victims. For example, the reader can realize how deeply affected a wrong sentence can be when Walter gets a visit from Stevenson in the mental hospital. After being proven innocent and released, Walter begins to suffer from dementia because of what he went through in prison. Stevenson says, Walter “was starting to panic, and I wasn’t sure what to do. Then he started crying. ‘Please get me out of here. Please? They’re going to execute me for no good reason, and I don’t want to die in no electric chair’”
(279). Just because he was free from prison and a wrong conviction does not mean that he was free from the pain and confusion of the entire experience. Not only are innocent people being put away, they are also being antagonized until after they are proven not guilty and sometimes even after that. For example when Walter was released, “Politicians would sometimes say provocative things- such as that his exoneration just proved that the system works” (243). The government still tried to save face and ended up causing him even more misery after he reached freedom. The unjust conviction even caused him problems with his family. Walter’s wife told his lawyer “It’s just all been too much. The stress, the gossip, the lies, everything…I don’t think I can go back to the way things were” (222). Not only did the socalled Justice system turn its back on him, his loved ones did as well. The reader starts to feel for these victims and realizes just how big of a problem these death sentences are.
Bryan Stevenson uses an ethical appeal by sharing his own experiences and credibility to let the reader know he is qualified to talk about the subject. Not only is the author a highly educated lawyer with knowledge of what it is like to come from a poor African American community, but he has also dealt with injustice first hand. When he was walking to his apartment, SWAT stopped him and illegally searched his vehicle, threw him on the ground, ran an illegal search, and never stopped to apologized. Stevenson recaps that the officer “wasn’t paying any attention to the rules” (41) and that the police officer “drew his weapon and pointed it at [him]” (40). After many meetings and letters sent to the police department, Stevenson still never received a formal apology. By sharing this story, the reader can tell that the author isn’t just talking about what he has heard about, he is talking from actual events he has witnessed as well. He can show that innocent people are mistreated and wrongly judged because he was an innocent civilian who was attacked just on the grounds of his color. This makes his argument more believable. This incident plus his high educational background makes him an expert on the topic.
Police injustice and a corrupt social justice system have been an issue and topic of discussion in the news in the past couple of years. This book encapsulates all the same points people are making today about how the police is judging people’s innocence off of looks. For example, in Ferguson Alabama in 2014, an African American man, Michael Brown, was assumed to be
dangerous and armed and he was shot down just for stealing a packet of cigarettes. This was only the start of police brutality and abuse of power toward harmless people. Injustice isn’t just happening in Just Mercy. These controversies are in full swing in our society today. We as a society need to know that innocent people are being put to death so that we can demand change of the way evidence is sorted through, who is condemned to death row, and who walks. The author effectively conveys the reasons capital punishment needs revising. His credibility gives him authority over the subject. The pathos he uses allows the audience to connect to the victims on a personal level. Lastly, his logical appeal provides cold hard facts that accurately catalog the errors in the justice system.
Shelbi Roohms
Professor Beth Eakman FSTY 1313-07 5 November 2015 Capital punishment has been a factor in the criminal justice system and a long debated policy throughout the centuries. In the past 100 years, society has viewed the death penalty differently. This shift started in 1972 when the court outlawed capital punishment. After the reinstitution of it in 1976, people did not see the death sentence the same. States began to abolish it and people have started pulling away from voting for it. This change in views is mainly caused by the rate of error in convictions. The Supreme Court should outlaw the death penalty because a large number of people who are sentenced are later found to have been innocent. This large number of wrong convictions affects impoverished people and their families disproportionately. The high number of people who have been sentenced to death and then later found innocent is unacceptable for a criminal justice system and reason enough to reconsider capital punishment in its entirety. Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy and President of the Equal Justice Initiative, has made his life’s work trying to exonerate wrongly convicted people. In his memoir he says, “The number of death row prisoners in Alabama for whom we’d won relief reached one hundred” (Stevenson 297). This is just the number for which The Equal Justice Initiative was responsible for freeing. This does not take into account any other programs helping people on death row. In 2003, The Christian Century Periodical reported “the number of inmates who have been released from death row since 1973,” is “111” (“Record Exonerations”). This high number shows how taking someone’s life is not worth it due to the many mistakes made in the judicial process. A study was run and researchers estimated that 4.1% of people are wrongly convicted on death row. They gathered information from the statistics already present about who had been exonerated and found innocent (“Rate Of False Conviction”). Out of 100 people, 4.1 of
them are estimated to be innocent when given the death penalty. This percentage takes into account people who are still awaiting trial to prove their innocence. This estimation cannot be completely trusted because it is based on prior exoneration records and how many people have been found innocent after death. There is no way for the Supreme Court to know how many innocent prisoners we have put to death in total. There is more error in death penalty sentences than any other sentence. In 2014, “Death sentences represent less than one-tenth of 1% of prison sentences in the United States (7), but they accounted for about 12% of known exonerations of innocent defendants from 1989 through early 2012 (2)” (“Rate Of False Conviction’). This means that more innocent people are being sentenced to death than just given life in prison or a number of years. The error isn’t as common in other sentences as it is in capital punishment. The Supreme Court would remove the possibility of mistakes if they eliminated the death penalty; helping the criminal justice system’s track record and saving lives. Only certain kinds of innocent people are being sentenced to death. Impoverished innocent people are being sentenced to capital punishment and do not have the means to pay for multiple appeals and trials. In Nevada, from 1997 to the present, a death penalty sentence cost the government “$1.03 to $1.3 million, whereas cases without the death penalty cost $775,000” (“Audit: Death Penalty”). Since these sentences cost the court and jails more money, they also cost the defendant more money to get a lawyer for a death sentence. The Kansas Judicial Council conducted a study from 34 cases between 2004 and 2011. The judicial Council found that “defending a death penalty case costs about four times as much as defending a case where the death penalty is not sought.” Kansas Legislature also found that “defense costs for death penalty trials averaged $395,762 per case, compared to $98,963” (“Costs of the Death Penalty”). These people can sit on death row and even be executed simply because they do not have enough money to challenge their sentence.
Racism is another factor that affects who gets convicted of these crimes and who does not. The Economist presents an incident that deals with these problems: in a Texas school, in 1981, one African American male was convicted out of five other white male suspects for a murder that he did not commit. He was not proven innocent and released until 1991. The judge turned to him and another man and said, “One of you two is going to hang for this…since you're the nigger, you're elected” (“One In Seven”). Racist bigotry in court officials caused the African American to be convicted over the other criminals. The criminal justice system feels pressure to find the perpetrator of the crime and their bias can get in the way when rushed to find the criminal. Any probability of racism affecting who dies at the hand of the law is cause enough to shut down a death sentence. In a conference in at The Northwestern University Law School in Chicago, it was stated, “Since 1976, 75 African American men and women have been convicted of capital crimes, sentenced to death, and later found innocent” (“One In Seven”). While not all of the criminal justice system is racist, there is clearly some bias leading to innocent people being wrongly sentenced to death. In addition to racist bias, pressure to identify the perpetrator leads to wrongful convictions as well. Rolando Cruz was on death row for 10 years and only got released after “a police officer admitted that he had lied under oath about a key piece of evidence” (“One In Seven”). Prosecutors have often been shown to bend evidence to fit the conviction they need. Out of the 75 African Americans wrongly accused “most of the 75 were accused of heinous crimes for which prosecutors, who are elected officials, were under pressure to find someone to blame” (“One In Seven”). Officials feel pressure from media, court judges, and lawyers to find the real criminal, and this pressure can sometimes result in the wrong conviction. There are high consequences of giving these innocent people capital punishment. A wrong sentence affects the imprisoned person, and their loved ones. In Stevenson’s book, the main character gets accused of a murder he did not commit and then later is exonerated.
Stevenson shows the effects that a wrong conviction has on a family of a defendant by telling the reasons Walter’s family did not want him to come home after he was released. His wife says to Stevenson, “It’s just all been too much. The stress, the gossip, the lies, everything…I don’t think I can go back to the way things were” (Stevenson 222). After prisoners are exonerated and released into society, they have a hard time fitting back into the life they left with their loved ones. Many cause more harm to their community after they have been released. In a study conducted by Langan and Levin in 2002, they found that prisoners who had been released, “within three years, 67.5 percent had been rearrested, and slightly more than half were back in prison for either a new crime or a parole or probation violation.” This statistic also applies to those who were innocent when they were sent to prison. Another reason that exonerated prisoners cannot return to normal is because an excriminal can start to be judged by society as only a prisoner no matter why they were released. This can negatively affect exonerated people’s self-esteem and the way they interact with their family and friends. Due to labeling, “a felon might result in an ex-offender identifying as such and committing acts of deviance that conform to this self-image” (“Re-Entering Society”). This can make it hard for someone who was exonerated to go back to his normal life before the criminal justice system stripped him of all his rights. Exonerating an innocent person from jail does not make up for the humiliation and emotional toll the experience causes. Assimilating back into society continues to be a challenge as they move forward because they are not always accepted as innocent. Society has a hard time believing they are guilt free after being convinced for so long. Stevenson explains that although Walter was exonerated, the media continued to harass him and the judges because they still believed he was the criminal. Walter was convinced for so long and the community accepted him as the murderer. It took the state and community a long time to change their mind set about him. A wrong conviction has
lasting effects. An exonerated person carries around that experience into all of their endeavors in the future. Inaccurate convictions should be feared by everyone, not just people on trial. An error in the criminal justice system can happen to anyone. When this error does happen, its lasting affects cause harm to more than just the convicted. The real perpetrator is still roaming free and breaking the law while an innocent man and his family suffers and taxpayer’s dollars go to waste. Eventually, these mistakes will start to be noticed more by the public. When this happens, the criminal justice system will start to lose power, authority, and credibility. The already weak relationship between the government and people has caused the effectiveness of the courts to dwindle quickly. The points made above and throughout this paper are just a few of the reasons why the death penalty should be outlawed and never used again for any circumstance.
Work Cited
Christian, Jennifer Walker, Katherine. "Re-Entering Society From Prison." Research Starters: Sociology (Online Edition) (2015): Research Starters. Web. 5 Oct. 2015. "Costs of the Death Penalty." Costs of the Death Penalty. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Nov. 2015. Gross, Samuel R., et al. "Rate Of False Conviction Of Criminal Defendants Who Are Sentenced To Death." Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences Of The United States Of America 111.20 (2014): 7230-7235. Science & Technology Collection. Web. 5 Oct. 2015. "Innocence and the Death Penalty." America 07 Feb. 2005: 3. Professional Development Collection. Web. 3 Oct. 2015. Lochhead, Colton. "Audit: Death Penalty Nearly Doubles Cost of Nevada Murder Cases." Las Vegas Review-Journal. N.p., 02 Dec. 2014. Web. 18 Nov. 2015. "One In Seven Wasn't Guilty." Economist 349.8096 (1998): 29-30. Business Source Complete. Web. 4 Oct. 2015. "Record Exonerations Of Death Row Inmates." Christian Century 120.17 (2003): 17. Academic Search Complete. Web. 5 Oct. 2015. Stevenson, Bryan. Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption. New York, NY: Spiegel & Grau, 2014. Print.