Capital Punishment of the Innocent Edward Earl Johnson

1360 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Capital punishment through the years

Capital Punishment of the Innocent Edward Earl Johnson Edward Earl Johnson was put in death row when he was eighteen. A documentary was made when he was twenty-six, called “fourteen days in May.” Edward claimed all along that he was innocent yet he was still executed. The documentary showed he had lived for eight years at the Parchment state penitentiary, Mississippi (death row.) Edward was put to death row for the attempted rape of an elderly white woman and the murder of a white Marshall. The documentary tried to show his innocence, the process of this is what this essay will be about. The opening scenes from the documentary showed the Parchment State Penitentiary. You saw a large building inside of barbwire (sharp enough to have sliced you to bits). Inside of the building were hundreds of doors separated by metal doors. When you saw the prisoners cells, all of the prisoners were all standing with there hands reached out by which the camera tried to emphasise the point of “slavery.” You saw shots of the gas chamber, inside sat the chair Edward died in, with the belts that strapped him in. It showed most of the staff treating the prisoners like slaves, you see them working in lines digging in the fields with the staff watching over them on their horses with their whips. This just showed how little things have changed since slavery. A pep talk that the superintendent gave to workers about “off colour remarks” proves that there was racism at the Parchment Sate Penitentiary. The documentary showed many of the interviews. The interview with Edward was long and detailed (behind bars, as was most of the interviews with him) so he could give his side of the story: Edward said that eight years ago when he was first taken to t... ... middle of paper ... ...ade. At the end of the sequel, Samual Johnson says “I still try to love and care.” and “Hate perpetinates hate!” The only appeal was hope. Both of these documentaries carried out the message: “Innocent people can die.” The statistic that came up on the screen many times:- You are four times as likely to get the death sentence if you are a black who killed a white as a white man who is convicted of the same crime. If you were rich, you were more likely to get let off the death sentence more than a poor person was. From the documentaries you could see that death row is a cruel place which is torture alone and not only does the prisoner suffer for the time he/she is in there but so does their family and friends who are behind them. It must be hard on the prison staffs who become close to them, at the end of their sentence they have to kill him/her.

Show More
Related

  • Essay On The Death Penalty

    1306 Words  | 3 Pages

    typically spend over a decade waiting for a execution. During the meantime, prisoners are isolated from other prisoners, excluded from prison educational and employment programs, and sharply restricted in terms of visitation and exercise, spending as much as 23 hours a day alone in their cells. This raises the question of whether death row prisoners are receiving two distinct punishments: the death sentence itself, and the years of living in conditions tantamount to solitary confinement. Moreover, unlike general-population prisoners, even in solitary confinement, inmates live of constant uncertainty over when they will be executed. For some death row inmates, this isolation and anxiety results in a sharp deterioration in their mental

    Read More

  • Capital Punishment: Just Mercy By Attorney-At Law Bryan Stevenson

    1104 Words  | 3 Pages

    The non-fiction text I decided to read that led me to my topic of Capital Punishment is titled, Just Mercy by attorney-at-law Bryan Stevenson, and it provides stories of a lawyer who wanted to bring justice to the court system by helping men, women and children, sentenced to death row by helping them obtain their freedom. The book first begins with a back story of the Mr. Stevenson. Bryan Stevenson is a graduate from the law soon of Harvard. His interest in Death Row cases grew when the law office he was interning for sent him to talk to a man, Walter McMillian, who was sentenced to death row after wrongfully being accused of a murder he did not commit and was framed for. Mr. Bryan helped him, and Walter was eventually released about six years in death row. In the book, Mr. Stevenson goes through many cases that he has taken upon, some failures and some great success. The people Bryan helped were mostly minorities who faced racial bias at the time of their trial. He represented not only men, but also children. There’s stories about how a woman whose baby was born dead was sentenced to prison

    Read More

  • Capital Punishment Sherman Alexie

    1361 Words  | 3 Pages

    One can either be innocent or guilty. Likewise, one can choose to either condemn or empathize with the accused. These binaries prove amply important throughout Sherman Alexie's 1996 poem entitled "Capital Punishment," in which a prison cook recounts the day of an inmate's execution. Throughout the poem, the speaker parenthetically inserts on five separate occasions the phrase "I am not a witness," but near the conclusion of the poem, he contradicts his previous denials, proclaiming, "I am a witness." Readers of the poem may at first be puzzled by the speaker's repeated denial that he is a witness followed by his eventual declaration that he is, in fact, a witness; however, further examination reveals that the speaker, by progressing from condemnation

    Read More

  • The Hanging Of Ephraim Wheeler Analysis

    897 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Browns were successful in utilizing the long term effects of the trial without showing bias in “The Hanging of Ephraim Wheeler,” and even though they failed to provide a direct evaluation of the event, the book was still very successful. It is very obvious that a lot of research was put into this book. The research was well organized and properly utilized. The story like nature of this book made it easier to follow, but also factored into the failure to provide a true evaluation of the trial. Despite its faults “The Hanging of Ephraim Wheeler” was truly a good

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Bryan Stevenson's Close To Death: Reflections On Race And Capital Punishment

    1861 Words  | 4 Pages

    “A report by the United States General Accounting Office in 1990 concluded that 82 percent of the empirically valid studies on the subject show that the race of the victim has an impact on capital charging decisions or sentencing verdicts or both” (86).

    Read More

  • America's Flawed Legal System Illustrated in the Film, The Thin Blue Line

    1772 Words  | 4 Pages

    Morris opens the film by juxtaposing the narratives by the participants in the interviews in order to show Adams’ innocent and Harris’ guilt. The beginning of the film introduces two people that one was believably wrongly convicted and the other was suspiciously a real murderer. Adams who was criminally convicted is interviewed with a white shirt. He narrates his life all the way from Ohio to end up getting a job in Dallas. By showing Adams on the white shirt, Morris tells us Adams’ innocence and proposes our...

    Read More

  • Living on Death Row

    938 Words  | 2 Pages

    The purpose of this paper is to examine life on death row. The information obtained in order to write this paper came from one article. In reading the article it is very clear to see the obvious one-sided bias of the author, who is apparently adamantly against the current status of death rows across the United States of America. Unfortunately, no research could be found to illustrate other views or opinions of life on death row. The author of this article used many opinions, first hand accounts and experiences of prisoners living on death row to illustrate his/her ideas. However, there is an obvious bias of those currently living on death row against their living conditions and treatment. It can be assumed that few people would want to be somewhere or enjoy being somewhere when they knew that they would eventually be executed. It is can also be assumed that very few people would find awaiting executing a happy or fulfilling experience. It is interesting to note that while searching the Internet for information on the death penalty an abundance of web sites were found that belonged to prisoners on death row. All of whom claimed that they were wrongly accused, framed for, and innocent of the crimes that they were convicted of committing.

    Read More

  • Race Capital Punishment And The Cost Of Murder By M. Choolbi

    841 Words  | 2 Pages

    The author omits critical information about many factors, which could explain the higher rate of severe sentences for African Americans than White Americans other than racial injustice. The article, “Possibility of Death Sentence Has Divergent Effect on Verdicts for Black and White Defendants” by Jack Glaser, et al. provides an excellent analysis of the racial disparities that Cholbi mentions. Glaser provides clear evidence of how factors such as sentence severity and jury selection can influence sentencing. The authors also discuss how African Americans are though of when discussing crime and how African Americans are considered like apes. However the article discusses how these assumptions comply with African-American behavior; “There is also evidence that in the context of criminality, there is a relatively strong association between Black men and apes. It follows that insofar as Black people may be viewed as being less worthy of humane (or even human) treatment, concerns over punishment severity (even death) would be less consequential” (Glaser et al. 541). The authors stimulate an experiment through mock jurors and found no concrete evidence to suggest banning capital punishment due to racial discrimination. Therefore Glaser et al. does a superior argument when compared to

    Read More

  • Race And The Death Penalty

    2375 Words  | 5 Pages

    Race plays a large factor in showing how you are viewed in society. Although there is no longer slavery and separate water fountains, we can still see areas of our daily life clearly affected by race. One of these areas is the criminal justice system and that is because the color of your skin can easily yet unfairly determine if you receive the death penalty. The controversial evidence showing that race is a large contributing factor in death penalty cases shows that there needs to be a change in the system and action taken against these biases. The issue is wide spread throughout the United States and can be proven with statistics. There is a higher probability that a black on white crime will result in a death penalty verdict than black on black or white on black. Race will ultimately define the final ruling of the sentence which is evident in the racial disparities of the death penalty. The amount of blacks on death row can easily be seen considering the majority of the prison population is black or blacks that committed the same crime as a white person but got a harsher sentence. The biases and prejudices that are in our society relating to race come to light when a jury is selected to determine a death sentence. So what is the relationship between race and the death penalty? This paper is set out to prove findings of different race related sentences and why blacks are sentenced to death more for a black on white crime. Looking at the racial divide we once had in early American history and statistics from sources and data regarding the number of blacks on death row/executed, we can expose the issues with this racial dilemma.

    Read More

  • Racial Disparities In The Criminal Justice System Essay

    802 Words  | 2 Pages

    Racial Disparities in the Criminal Justice System “We simply cannot say we live in a country that offers equal justice to all Americans when racial disparities plague the system by which our society imposes the ultimate punishment,” stated Senator Russ Feingold. Even though racism has always been a problem since the beginning of time, recently in the United States, there has been a rise in discrimination and violence has been directed towards the African American minority primarily from those in the white majority who believe they are more superior, especially in our criminal justice system. There are many different reasons for the ethnic disparities in the criminal justice system between the majority and the minority, but some key reasons are differential involvement, individual racism, and institutional racism to why racial disparities exist in Institutional racism is racism that is shown through government organizations and political institutions. In a report done by David Baldus in 1998, he discovered that when it comes to the death penalty, blacks are more likely sentenced to death than whites, and those who kill whites are more likely to be given the death penalty than the killing of blacks (Touré).

    Read More

  • The Death Of The Haywood Trial

    605 Words  | 2 Pages

    For three hours and a half in a courtroom at Boise, Ohio, Harry Orchard assembled in the witness chair at the Haywood trial and recounted a record of offenses, slaughter, and murder… the like of which no individual in the overcrowded courtroom had ever thought of. Not in the entire scope of "Bloody Gulch" literature will there be exposed anything that approaches an equivalent to the atrocious narrative so motionlessly, coolly, and composedly voiced by this audacious, disimpassioned man-slaughterer.

    Read More

  • Affirmative Action and Capital Punishment

    1177 Words  | 3 Pages

    ...already in there for life, there is nothing to stop him or her from killing other prisoners on a spree. The death penalty ensures more safety in that sense, because the prisoner will most likely consider his punishment of life sentence as bad enough and not want anything worse.

    Read More

  • Essay On Spike Lee

    1166 Words  | 3 Pages

    This documentary as nominated for the Best Feature Documentary Academy Award. It showed the world the actual crimes and events that were happening in society that otherwise would have been overlooked after the initial shock. The moral, values and importance of these events being spread by mass communication can lead to awareness and hopefully avoidance of familiar events in the

    Read More

  • Why the Death Penalty Should Be Abolished

    1035 Words  | 3 Pages

    For instance, the 1972 Furman V. Georgia case abolished the death penalty for four years on the grounds that capital punishment was extensive with racial inequalities (Latzer 21). Over twenty five years later, those inequalities are higher than ever. The statistics says that African Americans are twelve percent of the U.S. population, but are 43 percent of the prisoners on death row. Although blacks make up 50 percent of all murder victims, 83 percent of the victims in death penalty cases are white. Since 1976 only ten executions involved a white defendant who had killed a bl...

    Read More

  • Speech: Against Capital Punishment

    1171 Words  | 3 Pages

    It must be remembered that criminals are real people too, which have. life and with it, the feeling of pain, fear and the loss of their loved ones and all the other emotions that the rest of us feel. There is no such thing as a humane way of putting someone to death. Every type of execution causes the prisoner physical suffering, some. methods perhaps cause less than others, but be in no doubt that being.

    Read More

More about Capital Punishment of the Innocent Edward Earl Johnson

Open Document