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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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R. V. Schoenborn Case Study

1344 Words | 6 Pages

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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275 Words | 2 Pages

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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The Argumentative Paragraph In The Tell-Tale Heart By Edgar Allan Poe

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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728 Words | 3 Pages

“ The Tell-Tale Heart” Interpretive Essay Is the complex character created by Edgar Allan Poe a calculated killer or a delusional madman. In the short story “The Tell Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe, the main character has a mental condition which causes him to kill a neighbor. He believes that his neighbor has a “vulture eye” which is the reason why he killed him. Night after night, he watches the man and plans how to kill him. Then one night, he puts his plan into action.

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522 Words | 3 Pages

In Edgar Allan Poe’s story the Tell Tale Heart a man decides that he has to kill the old man he lives with. Because he can no longer stand to look at the old man’s ghastly looking eye. He starts plotting his way to do this. He thinks very long and hard and wise about the decision he has just made. Tons of things could go wrong here, but all he is worried about is getting rid of the eye.

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576 Words | 3 Pages

And every night he would slip away not being able to do it, why? Because the man’s eye was always closed. The whole reason for the murder was because of the man’s diseased “vulture” eye. Without the motive, the murder couldn’t happen. People suffering from insanity would blame the victim for their own crime which exactly what is happening here.

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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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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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1708 Words | 7 Pages

Most mentally ill people who are convicted on capital charges should not be executed, for three such reasons. Firstly, the executions would violate equal protection of the laws in any jurisdiction in which execution of children and people with mental illness of any kind that psychologically cannot fully comprehend what they are committing is barred. Secondly, many death sentences imposed on people with mental illness violate due process more so because their mental illness is treated by the aggravating factor, either directly or to create a separate aggravating circumstance. Thirdly, many mentally ill offenders, who are sentenced to death, will be so impaired to what is fully going on at the time of execution that they can not emotionally understand the significance of their punishment. Thus, they cannot be executed under the eighth amendment; Regarding this, the latter conclusion is required even if they are cured through some sort of treatment.

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557 Words | 3 Pages

While this may be the case, many people may think he was fully aware of what he was doing. This can be proven wrong because the narrator states, “I loved the old man. He had never wronged me... I think it was his eye yes, it was this!”(2).This quote reveals that it was not the old man at all that had made him want to murder him, it was his eye that was his motivation.

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Tell Tale Heart Sane Or Insane Analysis

565 Words | 3 Pages

This is exactly the reason the narrator has killed the old man, because of his “evil eye”. Not only is this ridiculous on its own, but the narrator directly states that he loved this man. “I loved the old man. He had never wronged

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473 Words | 2 Pages

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The 8th Amendment Of The Death Penalty

835 Words | 4 Pages

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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1164 Words | 5 Pages

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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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