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Article Rebuttal

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Article Rebuttal
Doug Petroff
BCOM/275
December 14, 2011
DeeAnna Stiglich

Article Rebuttal
The article chosen for this assignment was published in the University of Denver student newspaper and titled Capital Punishment is Wrong, the United States needs to abolish the death penalty sentence.
In this article, the author Ryan Hanschen states that the death penalty does not act as a deterrent to crime and offers supporting data to his claim that the death penalty should be abolished, but his sources lack credibility. The sources he cites in the article, such as Coloradans against the Death Penalty and Amnesty International are an interested party. These two sources stand to gain if the death penalty is abolished because abolishing the death penalty is their mission.
Ryan Hanschens blatant use of rhetoric is obvious when he states for his argument, “How can we call ourselves the land of the free with a straight face while remaining one of the only first world countries that still executes its citizens?” Also his bias is apparent when he states, “we must end this vicious practice of capital punishment in the United States.”
Included in the article is a University of North Carolina study that shows that the odds of minorities receiving a death sentence rose 3.5 times among those defendants whose victims were White, indicating a bias against minority defendants. However, this study did not provide data indicating the percentage of crimes committed by minorities vs. the crimes committed by Whites, so the validity of the University of North Carolina study is not complete and warrants more data to be a reliable source.
Also in this article, published in 2004, a Hart research poll of police chiefs in the United States believes that the death penalty is not an effective law enforcement tool. The reliability of this poll is in question because it was conducted in

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