In Cold Blood Synthesis Essay
(Suggested time—40 minutes. This question counts for one-third of the total essay section score.)
Directions: The following prompt is based on the accompanying seven sources.
As society evolves, the effects of the death penalty continue to be varied and complex. Society’s view could simply be measured by the violence that pervades the macrocosm or by personal anecdotes. Is this view of the death penalty valid?
Carefully read the following seven sources, including the introductory information for each source. Then synthesize information from at least three of the sources and incorporate it into a coherent, well-developed essay that examines what issues should be considered most important in making decisions about violence. Take a position that defends, refutes, or qualifies.
Make sure that your argument is central; use the sources to illustrate and support your reasoning. Avoid merely summarizing the sources. Indicate clearly from which sources you are drawing, whether through direct quotation, paraphrase, or summary. You may cite the sources as Source A, Source B, etc., or by using descriptions in parentheses.
You may refer to the sources by their titles (Source A, Source B, etc.) or by the descriptions in the parentheses.
Source A: Death Penalty Statistics (Anti-death Penalty Website)
Source B: Anatomy of Violence (Newseek)
Source C: Trained to Kill “Virus of Violence” (Christianity Today)
Source D: Teen Violence (Cartoon: Capital E & Green Mile Marathon)
Source E: “Sisters, family: Surviving Clutter daughters hope to preserve their parents' legacy” (Special to the Journal)
Source F: “The Death Penalty: Racist, Classist and Unfair (Time Magazine)
Source G:“The death penalty: On the way out?” (Week Magazine)
The following chart is based on statistics from the Bureau of Justice
U.S. statistics are from the Bureau of Justice and are the official United States statistics as compiled by the government. I've updated them in October, 2009 using the Bureau's latest numbers which are compiled from data for the years 2007 and 2008.
Approximate number of Death Row inmates per state.
AL / 195 / KY / 40 / OK / 85AZ / 110 / LA / 85 / OR / 30
AR / 35 / MD / 5 / PA / 220
CA / 655 / MS / 70 / SC / 60
CO / 2 / MO / 50 / SD / 5
CT / 5 / MT / 2 / TN / 100
DE / 15 / NE / 10 / TX / 390
FL / 375 / NH / 0 / UT / 10
GA / 100 / NV / 80 / VA / 20
ID / 20 / NJ / 10 / WA / 10
IL / 10 / NM / 2 / WY / 2
IN / 20 / NY / 1 / FEDS / 40
KS / 5 / NC / 165
OH / 185
The following excerpt is taken from an online magazine.
Guns explain the high body count in Blacksburg and Columbine; you don't hear of many mass stabbings. But historians have long noted the American propensity toward violence independent of the ubiquity of guns. In his 1970 collection "American Violence: A Documentary History," Richard Hofstadter wrote of the "extraordinary frequency, [the] sheer commonplaceness" of violence in American history. Stanford historian Lawrence Friedman mused that it "must come from somewhere deep in the American personality ... The specific facts of American life made it what it is ... crime has been perhaps a part of the price of liberty."
By the numbers, the United States should have low levels of homicidal violence, which roughly tracks a country's income. Britain, for instance, had 1.5 homicides per 100,000 population between 1998 and 2000. Japan had 1.1, while South Africa had 54. The rate of violent death in the United States was 5.9 per 100,000—above even Turkey's 2.5. Clearly, culture matters. How?
The United States is a nation of immigrants. Those who choose to pull up stakes and try their luck in a distant land "have energy and are willing to take risks," says psychologist John Gartner of Johns Hopkins University. For most immigrants, that translates into a spark and drive that lead them to success in their adopted land. For a few, however, risk-taking coupled with impulsivity may set the stage for violence, Gartner says, "and you do see more violence in immigrant nations like Australia and America." If barriers of language or culture keep an immigrant child from fitting in, it can increase the risk that he will become alienated and, given enough triggers, resort to violence.
Rates of criminal violence are higher in mobile and heterogeneous societies where it is hard to put down roots and establish the social glue that binds people into a community. The United States, of course, is a highly mobile society and, as a result, a nation of strangers. Murder and violence are also higher in nations with the largest income inequality. The United States ranks high on this problematic measure. Perhaps it was no coincidence that Cho railed that "your Mercedes wasn't enough, you brats. Your golden necklaces weren't enough, you snobs. Your trust fund wasn't enough."
The following is taken from an academic journal.
To understand the reasons behind Jonesboro, Springfield, Pearl, Paducah, and all the other outbreaks of this "virus of violence," we need to understand first the magnitude of the problem. The per capita murder rate doubled in this country between 1957--when the FBI started keeping track of the data--and 1992. A fuller picture of the problem, however, is indicated by the rate people are attempting to kill one another--the aggravated assault rate. That rate in America has gone from around 60 per 100,000 in 1957 to over 440 per 100,000 by the middle of this decade. As bad as this is, it would be much worse were it not for two major factors.
First is the increase in the imprisonment rate of violent offenders. The prison population in America nearly quadrupled between 1975 and 1992. According to criminologist John J. DiIulio, "dozens of credible empirical analyses . . . leave no doubt that the increased use of prisons averted millions of serious crimes." If it were not for our tremendous imprisonment rate (the highest of any industrialized nation), the aggravated assault rate and the murder rate would undoubtedly be even higher.
Children don't naturally kill; they learn it from violence in the home and most pervasively, from violence as entertainment in television, movies, and interactive video games.
The second factor keeping the murder rate from being any worse is medical technology. According to the US Army Medical Service Corps, a wound that would have killed nine out of ten soldiers in World War II, nine out of ten could have survived in Vietnam. Thus, by a very conservative estimate, if we had 1940-level medical technology today, the murder rate would be ten times higher than it is. The magnitude of the problem has been held down by the development of sophisticated lifesaving skills and techniques, such as helicopter medivacs, 911 operators, paramedics, CPR, trauma centers, and medicines.
The following comic references the death penalty.
The following article is taken from a magazine article about a family’s grieving methods.
The scrapbooks and stories tell the family's true history.
Within three thick red binders are children's photos, graduation announcements, tidbits of diaries, correspondence through the years and mementos of Herb and Bonnie Clutter's family. Then there are the stories Beverly English, 65, has written about each of her parents -- stories describing everything from what kind of music they enjoyed to how Bonnie would kill and pluck a chicken for dinner.
The scrapbooks and stories portray the family the way no one else has -- certainly not Truman Capote, whose book, "In Cold Blood," told of the Clutter family murders in Holcomb, Kan., in November 1959.
"We want to remember our parents in a positive light," said English, one of the family's two surviving daughters, "not the negative."
The positives come in the form of the scrapbooks, loving memories and a number of memorials throughout Kansas. The negatives are the brutal murders of Herb and Bonnie Clutter, their daughter, Nancy, 16, and son, Kenyon, 15, and, to make it all worse, what the daughters and others say are Capote's inaccuracies in describing the Clutter family.
English and her sister, Eveanna Mosier, 68, have declined all interview requests through the years, and they still won't talk about the killings. However, for the first time, the sisters recently granted interviews and touched on their family's portrayal in Capote's book. They are determined to keep their parents' legacy alive, although they prefer to do so within their family rather than publicly. Just as their parents did, they have shied away from the limelight.
"Dad was always trying to help out someone," English said, "and he didn't want any credit for it."
Part of the sisters' reluctance to speak is that they feel betrayed and exploited by Capote and others in the media. Before "In Cold Blood" appeared, a series of articles that would become the book appeared in the New Yorker magazine in 1965. The sisters read the first article, which described their family.
In a letter the sisters often send to decline interview requests, they explained their reaction to that article and why they preferred to keep their family's story to themselves.
"I am sure you understand our reservations in granting your request," they wrote. "Truman Capote made a similar request to write an article for the New Yorker Magazine that he said would be a ‘tribute' to the family. He also communicated to us that we (the daughters) would be given the opportunity to review the article before publication. Mr. Capote did not honor his agreement, nor did he talk to any family members or friends who could have provided accurate and reliable information about the family. The result was his sensational novel, which profited him and grossly misrepresented our family."
The following is taken from a magazine article on the death penalty.
Some two-thirds of Americans support the death penalty, but few are forced to confront it on a daily basis. As an appellate lawyer in Texas — which leads the U.S. in executions — David Dow has represented more than 100 death-row inmates over the past two decades. In The Autobiography of an Execution, he recounts what it's like to do the job and then come home to his family and his dog. He talked to TIME about why he keeps doing the work, the problem with juries and what it's like to look murderers in the eye.
You call the capital-punishment system "racist, classist [and] unprincipled," but say you feel sympathy for people who support the death penalty. How can the two coexist?
On a regular basis, I'm sitting face to face with murderers. When I imagine sitting face to face with somebody who might have injured somebody I love or care about, I can imagine wanting to injure that person myself. I used to support the death penalty. [But] once I started doing the work, I became aware of the inequalities. I tell people that if you're going to commit murder, you want to be white, and you want to be wealthy — so that you can hire a first-class lawyer — and you want to kill a black person. And if [you are], the odds of your being sentenced to death are basically zero. It's one thing to say that rich people should be able to drive Ferraris and poor people should have to take the bus. It's very different to say that rich people should get treated one way by the state's criminal-justice system and poor people should get treated another way. But that is the system that we have. (See the top 10 crime duos.)
The following is taken from an online magazine article.
After the “sickening spectacle” of a botched execution, Gov. Ted Strickland suspended the death penalty in the state of Ohio.
“Enough,” said The Hartford Courant in an editorial. “The death penalty is a national embarrassment,” and if any further proof were needed, it was provided a few weeks ago in Ohio. Prison technicians there trying to execute convicted murderer Romell Broom by lethal injection struggled to find a usable vein, repeatedly sticking needles into his bruised and bleeding arms and legs for two horrifying hours. Broom cried out in pain when the needles hit bone, and even tried to assist the bumbling executioners in finding a vein before they had no choice but to return a traumatized, weeping prisoner to his cell. Broom was a killer, but the “sickening spectacle” of his botched execution was a reminder of why a government shouldn’t punish one horrific crime with another.
Gov. Ted Strickland has since suspended executions in Ohio, said The New York Times, but a better response would be a permanent, nationwide ban. Executions are not only immoral—they’re absurdly expensive. Because of years of legal appeals, and the added cost of keeping prisoners on “death row,” it cost Maryland, for example, $186 million to execute five prisoners over two decades. So make it cheaper, said Ed Okonowicz in the Wilmington, Del., News Journal. After being sentenced to death, most murderers spend years, often decades, appealing their verdicts through taxpayer-funded court proceedings, while the families of their victims wait in agony for justice. Rather than banning the death penalty, we should be “fast-tracking executions.”
Essay Scoring Guidelines
The score should reflect a judgment of the essay’s quality as a whole. Remember that students had only 15 minutes to read the sources and 40 minutes to write; therefore, the essay is not a finished product and should not be judged by standards that are appropriate for an out-of-class assignment. Evaluate the essay as a draft, making certain to reward students for what they do well.
All essays, even those scored 8 or 9, may contain occasional flaws in analysis, prose style, or mechanics.Such features should enter into the holistic evaluation of an essay’s overall quality. In no case may anessay with many distracting errors in grammar and mechanics be scored higher than a 2.
9 Essays earning a score of 9 meet the criteria for a score of 8 and, in addition, are especially sophisticated in their argument, thorough in development, or impressive in their control of language.
8 Effective
Essays earning a score of 8 effectively develop a position on whether or not the effects of the death penalty have impacted society. They support their position by successfully synthesizing* at least three of the sources. Theargument is convincing, and the student uses the sources effectively to develop a position. The prosedemonstrates an ability to control a wide range of the elements of effective writing but is not necessarilyflawless.
7 Essays earning a score of 7 fit the description of 6 essays but are distinguished by morecomplete or more purposeful argumentation and synthesis of sources or a more matureprose style.
6 Adequate
Essays earning a score of 6 adequately develop a position on the effects of the death penalty. They synthesize at least three of the sources. The writer’s argument is generally convincing,and the writer generally uses the sources to support a position, but the argument is less developed or lesscogent than the arguments of essays earning higher scores. The language may contain lapses in diction orsyntax, but generally the prose is clear.
5 Essays earning a score of 5 develop a position on the death penalty. They support the position by synthesizing at least three sources, but theirarguments and their use of sources are somewhat limited, inconsistent, or uneven. The
argument is generally clear, and the sources generally support the student’s position, but thelinks between the sources and the argument may be strained. The writing may contain lapsesin diction or syntax, but it usually conveys the student’s ideas adequately.
4 Inadequate
Essays earning a score of 4 inadequately develop a position on the effects of the death penalty. They attempt to present an argument and support the position by synthesizing at least twosources but may misunderstand, misrepresent, or oversimplify either their own argument or the sourcesthey include. The link between the argument and the sources is weak. The prose of 4 essays may suggestimmature control of writing.
3 Essays earning a score of 3 meet the criteria for a score of 4 but demonstrate lessunderstanding of the sources, less success in developing their own position, or less controlof writing.
2 Little Success
Essays earning a score of 2 demonstrate little success in developing a position. They may merely allude to knowledge gained from reading the sources ratherthan citing the sources themselves. These essays may misread the sources, fail to present an argument, orsubstitute a simpler task by merely responding to the question tangentially or by merely summarizing thesources. The prose of 2 essays often demonstrates consistent weaknesses in writing, such as a lack of
development or organization, grammatical problems, or a lack of control.
1 Essays earning a score of 1 meet the criteria for a score of 2 but are especially simplistic or are
weak in their control of writing or do not cite even one source.