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8th Amendment Of The Death Penalty Analysis

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Imagine waking in the middle of the night and seeing a pair of eyes glaring at you as you lay in bed. In the story ‘The Tell Tale Heart’ by Edgar Allan Poe, the murderer stares at his victim while he is sleeping for seven nights in a row before he commits the murder. The narrator justifies his actions by claiming that the old man's eye was evil. It is also perceived that the narrator has a disease or mental illness. On the day of the murder, the madman went into the old man's room and threw his bed over him. Subsequently, he dismembered the body and hid it under the floorboard. When the police came to investigate a scream reported by a neighbor, the murderer tried to act calm and became very paranoid. Based on the evidence presented in the 8th Amendment of the Death Penalty, he should be sentenced to time in a mental institution because the narrator does not know right from wrong, he had no motive, and he is not well. …show more content…

His intention was not to kill the old man, but to “rid myself of the eye forever...He had the eye of a vulture-- a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold” (Poe, 1843). The madman had the impression that he was doing something beneficial by getting rid of the evil eye. He thought that this justified the fact the he was going to kill the old man. This is significant because since the murderer did not know that he was doing something wrong, he should not be put to death. Executing a person for doing something that they believed was right would be cruel. A mentally ill person’s brain does not work the same way as a sane person so they should not be blamed for what they cannot

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There is also an inclination to believe that if he had not suffered from this state, then the offence would not have been committed, specially not in the barbaric way it was done. Thus, it cannot be concluded that the accused willfully preformed the act, nor that the mens rea and the actus reus coincided while he was not in a psychotic state. (Roach, 113) Related to this finding is another element that supports the verdict of the Honorable Judge, which is the Principle of Fundamental Justice that states that no one should be “punished for morally involuntary actions.” (Roach, 82) A person who successfully raises the mental disorder defence is considered to be morally innocent of the act because they were not acting freely, in this case, free from psychotic ideations.

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American society has always wrestled with the concept and ethics of capital punishment. Despite the meticulous process involved when convicting someone, there are many questions and exceptions about who qualifies and the process in and of itself, as to be expected when dealing with something so profound and permanent. What if the accused is mentally ill? What if the perpetrator committed the crime when defending someone else? What if the convicted is innocent, but still put to death?

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In Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”, the narrator should not be guilty by reason of insanity. “Insanity Defense” states that a man is innocent by means of insanity if he has committed the crime because he is “unable to control his impulses” as a result of mental disease (“Insanity Defense” 1). Similarly, the narrator in “The Tell-Tale Heart” viewed the old man’s “pale blue eye, with a film over it” with hatred (Poe 1). When the old man’s eye looked upon the narrator, he would uncontrollably increase in fury and anger. This led the narrator to “[make] up [his] mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid [him]self of the eye forever” (Poe 1).

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728 Words | 3 Pages

This is because the 8th amendment states, “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” Giving someone who has mental disease the death penalty would be seen as a cruel and unusual punishment. Some may argue that even though the killer did murder the man, he did not show any empathy for what he did. This can be proven otherwise because of the fact that someone under the influence of mental disease may not always be able to control their actions. In similar cases such as the Walton vs. Virginia, and Eley vs. Ohio, the same practice was used.

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It’s Not working out. By:Taija Jones. The 8th amendment says “Excessive bail shall not be required, Nor excessive fines imposed, Nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted” . With that being said if the 8th amendment applies for cruel punishments of death penalties then why is it still happening.

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I loved the old man. He had never wronged me.” Passionless and regretful all signs point to mental illness with the added bonus that he heard voices and he blamed killing him on the old man's diseased eye. There is no question whether he committed the crime or not the argument is whether he should go get help or go to jail. Hearing voices, not really wanting to kill him at all and blaming the victim on his eye?

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Murder is highly regarded as one of man’s greatest sins, but nonetheless has been extremely prevalent throughout human history. There are many different reasons one might kill someone, such as for pleasure, with malice, or even as a punishment. In some instances it occurs on a large scale, such as the Jewish Holocaust or in cases of war. Despite how commonplace murder seems in human society, the vast majority believe it is undeniably wrong and that only someone who is mentally ill could commit such a disturbing crime. In

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In today’s day and age, a person does not get put to death for just any crime. A recurring argument against the death penalty is that sentencing a defendant to death violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition. The Eighth Amendment protects against cruel and unusual punishment. Mental illness is expressly recognized as a mitigating factor in most death penalty statutes. The Supreme Court came to the conclusion in the case of Ford vs. Wainwright that the use of cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment to execute a person whose mental state renders understanding of capital punishment is impossible.

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While what he did was horrible and insane-like, the narrator did this process very sanely and put lots of thought into it. No absolute insane person would spend days and days watching someone sleep, or acting perfectly normal around victim just so they could tike their kill perfectly, even though watching someone sleep is an insane trait. He was very cautious in this, “But you should have seen how wisely I proceeded -- with what caution -- with what foresight, with what dissimulation, I went to work!” and proved to be quite patient, “It took me an hour to place my whole head within the opening so far that I could see him as he lay upon his bed.’’ So he couldn’t have been totally insane, right?

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The man also said that he has a disease. That statement changed the court case to figure out his punishment. Based on the evidence present in the 8th amendment of the Death Penalty the main character should be sentenced to life in prison because the narrator did kill the man, plan the murder, and dispose of the body in a cruel and unusual way. To begin the man had been planning this for quite a while. “I was never kinder to the old man than during

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879 Words | 4 Pages

Analysis of The Tell-Tale Heart “The Tell-Tale Heart” short story written by Edgar Allan Poe, the narrator which is the murder in the story is trying to convince the audience that he is not insane. He has been ill, but insists that his illness has made his mind, feeling, and senses even stronger. The narrator wants to kill the old man that he lives with only because he finds that his eye is evil and compares his eye to a vulture. “And every morning I went to his room, and with a warm, friendly voice I asked him how he had slept. He could not guess that every night, just at twelve, I looked in at him as he slept.”

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557 Words | 3 Pages

One sign of the narrator being insane is that he has impulsive behavior. For example, the narrator says, “First of all, I dismembered the corpse, I cut off the head, and the arms, and the legs, or … works as well” (12). This means that he cut off the body without thinking about it beforehand. Furthermore, the narrator also says that he did not just leave the body there, but hid it too. All of this matters because it was a very sudden action

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434 Words | 2 Pages

While Edgar Allan Poe as the narrator of the The Tell-Tale Heart has the reader believe that he was indeed sane, his thoughts and actions throughout the story would prove otherwise. As the short story unfolds, we see the narrator as a man divided between his love for the old man and his obsession with the old man’s eye. The eye repeatedly becomes the narrator’s pretext for his actions, and while his delusional state caused him much aggravation, he also revealed signs of a conscience. In the first paragraph of the short story, The Tell-Tale Heart, Edgar Allan Poe establishes an important tone that carries throughout his whole story, which is ironic.

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558 Words | 3 Pages

The Tell-Tale Heart Argumentative Paragraph In the story, “ The Tell-Tale Heart ,” Poe gives ideas which could prove that the narrator is criminally insane. The narrator could be named mad for some of his many actions and thoughts. The facts supporting this include: the defendant killed the old man over his “evil eye”, he brutally murdered the man and dismembered his body, he has to remind himself that he isn’t mad even though he committed murder, and states that he hears the dead man's heartbeat get louder and louder until he confesses murder. To begin with, the defendant kills the old man he lived with over his “evil” eye. He states that it gets to him, and drives him to eventually, after the 8th night, kill him.

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The narrator 's sole reason for such murder is purely in his disturbed mind, as he develops an obsession with the old man 's eye and the plot unfolds from here where his insanity augments with the events of the story. Due to Poe’s illustrative language, various evidence can be presented to confirm the state of mind of the narrator, including, his obsession with the old man’s eye, his precision in committing the impeccable crime and finally the sound of the man’s beating heart solely inside his head. Perhaps it all started with the narrator’s obsession with the man’s “vulture eye” since he believes the eye of being evil, proving the insanity he is gravely trying to deny “I think it was

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