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Coretta Scott King The Death Penalty Is A Step Back Analysis

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Death penalty or capital punishment is a legal procedure carried out by the government of a state which sentences a convicted person to death. Capital punishment has been a matter of controversy in various countries for decades now. In this essay, Coretta Scott King talks about why she is against the death penalty. The main purpose of this critique is to focus on King’s arguments and evaluate their authenticity and credibility. In the essay “The Death Penalty Is a Step Back” the author, Coretta Scott King expresses her feelings about capital punishment and states reasons to back up her argument that the death penalty is both a racist and immoral practice. King believes that capital punishment is immoral and illegal, and that it by no means serves as a deterrent for other possible criminals. The author then further talks about how there have been numerous incidents where the mistakenly convicted is put down in the name of American justice. King then argues that by sentencing someone to death, one is assuming that the person convicted is not capable of rehabilitation. The …show more content…

She does so by presenting a rhetorical question in the beginning: “Can we expect a decent society if the state is allowed to kill its own people?” (para.2). In the attempt of doing so, she heightens the emotional impact it would have on her readers, which in turn makes the readers question the positive beliefs they might have held about the American government. In the fourth paragraph of this essay, King draws the interest of her readers to the text by talking about her personal experiences relating to the issue of capital punishment. She does so in order for the readers to come to an agreement with her main purpose and that is to present them with the fact that the American government’s actions to legitimize murder as a way of dealing with violence is a step forward in the wrong

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