death penalty is necessary as it is the judge himself who is hearing and deciding the case. The argument presented by the prosecution should be orderly and reasoned. It should contain some emotional appeal, as this is not a cut and dry case. The emotion should be muted as compared to a jury trial, with the most important result of the muting being avoiding insulting the intelligence of the judge. The type of argument that would be recommended to the prosecution follows as well as some explanation.The prosecution should begin with something that acknowledges the seriousness of the issue at hand and their primary reason for requesting the death penalty. It could be something like:It is hard to ask for the death penalty, but here was must. It is not okay for any person to kill another for no other reason but sport. This may be the worst and most dangerous kind of killing. We cannot allow for the proliferation of this behavior. To not enforce the death penalty in this case is a mandate for leniency in the punishment of those who hill their fellow man for sport.This may be a little charged for presentation to a judge, but for an opening it would work so long as the advocate continued by supporting the position with logical argument.In straight response to Darrow the prosecution might take his words “you must do this” (997) referring to the judge killing the boys and say “that the prosecution will show you why you must do this”. The prosecution should touch on the fact that it is not the judge’s job to question the wisdom of the death penalty, but to decide if the death penalty statute as written should be applied in this case. The weight and length of this portion of the argument should be decided by the history of the particular judge.Responding to Darrow’s claim that the prosecution used terms like “cold-blooded” to describe the crime and that terms like that are more appropriate f...
