Motivating your Research.

1. I am studying/trying to learn about the legal penalty for criminals proven "not guilty by reason of insanity" in murder trials.

2. I am studying/trying to learn about the legal penalty of criminals proven "not guilty by reason of insanity," because I want to find out whether or not the penalty is appropriate for the level of the crime, which is murder.

3. I am doing this in order to prove to my readers that the legal penalty or judgement for a criminal proven "not guilty by reason of insanity" should be increased when the crime is as serious as murder.

Revision.

Original
Despite lawyers’ abuse of the insanity defense, many still argue that the insanity defense is justified. Critics like Howard Zonana, Yale University psychiatry professor and the academy's medical director, argue that "the ‘overwhelming majority’ of defendants acquitted by reason of insanity suffer from schizophrenia or some other mental illness” (Martin 1). Although this may be true, the possibility that lawyers misuse the insanity defense must be taken into consideration, especially when the numbers of these cases are increasing. Let’s consider the Jack Ruby case, in which he murdered Lee Harvey Oswald. “In Ruby’s first statement to the police, he said that he killed Oswald because he ‘couldn’t stand the thought of Jackie [Mrs. Kennedy] undergoing the torment of attending Oswald’s trial. Nor could he forget ‘how Jackie had suffered and that Caroline and John wouldn’t have a daddy anymore” (Shaffer 2). These statements, along with the fact that Ruby suffered organic brain damage and epilepsy, conclude that Ruby was actually mentally unstable, and imprisonment would only worsen his condition (2). However, if we consider a murder trial such as the “Twinkie Defense,” the lawyer of the defendant struggled to prove Dan White had any history of mental instability, using his sugary diet as an excuse to justify his horrifying actions. The proposal that Dan White lacked criminal intent and was “insane” at the time of his murders seems ridiculous. This is an example of how the insanity defense is abused in murder trials. I am by no means proposing that the insanity defense be abolished; however, I am only pointing out that it is simply abused by lawyers in U.S murder trials.

Revised
Despite the abuse of the insanity defense, many still argue that the insanity defense is justified. Critics like Howard Zonana, Yale University psychiatry professor and the academy's medical director, argue that "the ‘overwhelming majority’ of defendants acquitted by reason of insanity suffer from schizophrenia or some other mental illness” (Martin 1). Although this may be true, the possibility that lawyers misuse the insanity defense must be taken into consideration, especially when the numbers of these cases are increasing. Let’s consider the Jack Ruby case, in which he murdered Lee Harvey Oswald. “In Ruby’s first statement to the police, he said that he killed Oswald because he ‘couldn’t stand the thought of Jackie [Mrs. Kennedy] undergoing the torment of attending Oswald’s trial. Nor could he forget ‘how Jackie had suffered and that Caroline and John wouldn’t have a daddy anymore” (Shaffer 2). These statements, along with the fact that Ruby suffered organic brain damage and epilepsy, conclude that Ruby was actually mentally unstable, and imprisonment would only worsen his condition (2). However, if we consider a murder trial such as the “Twinkie Defense,” defendants lawyer struggled to prove Dan White had any history of mental instability, using his sugary diet as an excuse to justify his horrifying actions. The proposal that Dan White lacked criminal intent and was “insane” at the time of his murders seems ridiculous. This is an example of how the insanity defense is abused in murder trials. I am by no means proposing that the insanity defense be abolished; however, I am only pointing out that it is simply abused by lawyers in U.S murder trials.

[There weren't many errors in many of the paragraphs because most of it included facts and statistics. So, when I revised the rebuttal paragraph (seen above), I only fixed a couple gramatical errors and sentence structure errors that I caught.]

Argument Venue.

A publication that my essay would most likely appear would be on Speakout.com, which is an online non-profit, member supported website with student written posts, generally associated with politics, government, and business. The article that I found on the website called, “Is the Insanity Plea Allowing Criminals to Avoid Justice?” which is very similar to the topic of my essay. The title of the article is pretty self-explanatory—the article was framed around two central events, the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan by John Hinckley Jr., and the trial of Jeffrey Dahmer, a Milwaukee man who killed, mutilated, and consumed his victims. The article explains briefly the facts of each of the unfortunate events where both criminals plead insanity.
The writer’s stance on the issue of pleading insanity in murder trials was somewhat unclear. The author states very bluntly that “an insanity plea is a poor excuse for serious law breaking, and should have no bearing on punishment.” However, in the following paragraph titled, “On the Other Hand…” she goes on to state that “the insanity plea is a valid legal defense.” Her voice is very strong in her piece, but these statements are very contradicting so it confused me during the reading.
As for the organization of her argument, I think it was organized well. She had boldfaced titles as well as bullets and underlined subtitles within her article. I thought this was really neat because it made the article easy to follow from one point to the next, letting the reader know what to expect in the paragraph in her subtitles.
After reading her article, I am not too sure if I agree with her or not—she makes valid points when she says “Defendants feign mental illness, and their attorneys use this loophole as a way to confuse jurors with complicated and questionable psychiatric evaluations.” However, I disagree when she says in the following paragraph that insanity cases are rare cases in the U.S.—this could be due to the fact that the article was written in 2000.
One thing the writer did that I liked was the organization throughout the article. She uses titles to guide the reader, as well as transition words after each point. Also, I do like the fact that she included a rebuttal paragraph; however, I thought it wasn’t very effective because she says that she overall agreed that pleading insanity was justified so it confused me.
In the article, the writer gives the right amount of background information so the reader wouldn’t be confused while reading it. I plan on doing this in my paper as well—I liked the fact that the writer doesn’t overwhelm the reader with too much background information, so in my own, I will only put in relevant information about the court system and how it works in an insanity case. In addition, the writer gives a sufficient amount of statistical data that, again, I thought wasn’t an unbearable amount. It was just the right amount of stats to keep the reader engaged in the paper, so I plan on doing this as well.

The article can be found here --> http://speakout.com/activism/issue_briefs/1229b-1.html