Perry Smith Should Not Be Disciplined With The Death Penalty

Perry Smith should not be disciplined with the death penalty. Smith has been through a lot throughout his life and this is not the proper punishment for him. This choice of discipline is not fair and should be overlooked. Smith was not in his right state of mind; he suffered from childhood trauma , and also he is very remorseful. Let's go into depth of why Smith is innocent of the murder of the Clutter family.

When the murder of the Clutter family was committed Smith was not in his right state of mind. Many people have mental disabilities or are mentally unstable which was the case for Smith. He may have been physically present, but mentally he was elsewhere. “The men themselves,they wrote, were puzzled as to why they killed their victims,

There is really no way for a person to get over childhood trauma of being beaten by a person who is suppose to love and nurture them. Childhood is where you are shaped for the rest of your life and if that's how Perry was shaped, then that's how he reacted. For example, statistics show that many men who watched their mothers get abused by their fathers or step-dads are more likely to beat their significant others, rather than other men who did not witness the abuse in their home. In addition to that Women who grew up in abusive homes are most likely to tolerate abuse from their significant others over women who did not experience abuse as a child. “ During moments of actual violence, they often felt separated or isolated from themselves, as if they were watching someone else seen in the historical background of all the cases was the occurrence of extreme parental violence during childhood.... One man said he was 'whipped every time I turned around.'The history relating to extreme violence, whether fantasied, observed in reality, or actually experienced by the child, fits in with the psychoanalytic hypothesis that the child's exposure to overwhelming stimuli, before he can master them, is closely linked to early defects in ego formation and later severe disturbances in impulse control.”( Capote.Page 191). It is not fair for a man to be blamed for doing what he was taught to do for most of his