a's now defunct electric chair. Mencken is opposed to the time these criminals spend on death row. He describes the wait as "horribly cruel"(84). To blame are the attorneys for these death row inmates. He feels that it is a ploy "in order to get his money (or that of his friends)"(83). Again, I do not agree with him. Although a thousand lawyers at the bottom of the ocean is a good start, they are not all to blame for our judicial system of appeal. Most states in this country, as well as other nations around the world, guarantee an automatic appeal upon sentence of death. The appeal process unfortunately is a long and arduous one. The United States Supreme Court alone "receives some 7,000 cases for review annually, and the number is increasing rapidly." (Harr 65). The lower courts of appeal, both state and federal, receive even more. With the amount of appeals loading our dockets, the time an inmate spends on death row is expected to be excessive.Ellison 6Mencken feels it is not necessary to make these men suffer through a prolonged stay on death row. What of the suffering of their victims? Were they all granted a speedy and painless death? I doubt it. The only objectionable part of a murderers stay is not the fact that he must suffer months or even years while awaiting his execution, but the burden on taxpayers to pay for his room and board during that stay.Although Mencken's article is very well written, it leads the reader to believe that he is a staunch supporter of the death penalty, when in fact he is very middle of the road. He believes in the reasons behind capital punishment, but not the means by which it is carried out.Ellison 7DON'T BLAME CRIME ON JOBLESSNESSbyDavid RubensteinIn his article about the relationship between crime rates and unemployment rates, David Rubenstein, not only sets up arguments both for and against this theory, but also breaks them down with well researched statistics and language that the reader can und...
