minor analysis paper 2

Casey Penaluna
Assignment 2
PART 1
Argument/Counter-argument

Pathos: The heading of an article written by Glenn Sacks in 2001 and printed in the Pasadena Star News is a clear indicator of his personal pathos in regards to an upsurge of sensationalized newspaper articles in regards to parents (namely women) killing (or attempting to kill) their children.
The title of the article? Female Murderers Seen in a Different Light: Society Prefers to View Violent Women as Victims
Reading this article it is clear that Sacks believes that the mother who attempted to drown her 6-month-old son in an apartment pool, the woman who asphyxiated her three children with car fumes and the woman who drowned her five children in a bathtub, are not, nor should not be seen as victims. Even though (upon further investigation) the mother (Elsie Lazaro-Louis) who attempted to drown her children was found to be delusional and suicidal – having cited that she sold her other two children to The Salvation Army – when in actuality they were away at summer camp. And the woman (Andrea Yates) who drowned her 5 children was found to be suffering from extreme post-partum psychosis.
Sacks accomplishes pathos through the use of statistical information in regards to gender and punishment when it comes to the crime of parental murder.
Apart from the small vignettes which I reproduced from his article above he foreshadowed his use of statistics with the following verbiage:
All of these crimes shocked the nation during the past week. But
should we really be so surprised? The truth is female violence in
American families is anything but rare.

Ethos: Sacks’ ethos expands into his use of statistics in regards to the increase in female perpetrated violence as recorded by The World Health Organization (which attributes the majority of infanticide to mothers), the police and various academics (whom believe that at least 15% of all SIDS deaths; roughly 7,000/year; are caused by mothers smothering their babies), the Department of Health and Human Services (who published results that custodial mothers are five times more likely to kill their children than are custodial fathers), and the U.S. Department of Justice (which has documented that 70% of confirmed child abuse cases and 65% of parental murder is perpetrated by the mother).
For good measure Sacks adds one more statistic which illustrates that between the years of 1980-1999 female crime increased 200% while the violent crime rate for the rest of the nation was declining. However, he does not list a backing agency to this particular statistic.
Sacks is smart in this article to have found a female, Patricia Pearson author of When She Was Bad: How and Why Women Get Away With Murder, to quote who shares his same views on the injustice of women being given a “free pass” when it comes to the punishment phase of trials. Sacks and Pearson both contend that just because a woman is a mother does not instantly translate into that woman being good and caring and maternal. She can be just as callous and cold-blooded as any man and should be held to the same sentencing standards as a man – instead of disproportionately hospitalized or even as they put it “getting away with murder.”
Logos: Sacks and Pearson take issue with the enablers of these women – the judges and defense attorneys – who insist in coddling these violent women instead of seeing then for what they truly are – evil. The assertion made in Pearson’s book is that the American public doesn’t want to believe that the historically nurturing figure (i.e. the mother) could have intentionally wanted to cause harm upon her own flesh and blood. So when their attorneys throw out such language as battered wife syndrome, post-partum depression, coercion or mentally incapable of understanding what she was doing at the time they continue to build on societies belief that women are victims, that women are weak, and that women cannot think for themselves in a rational manner.
In the end Sacks makes a plea for society to rethink their attitudes of women (he is clearly writing for a male audience throughout the article) in America. He asks for us to consider this one last point, “Treating the violent woman as if she were a child, insane, or a victim worthy of sympathy – is this the way to protect society and our children from violent criminals?”
Pathos: Friday November 21, 2008 there was a posting by a man named Charles to his blog Heartache with Hard Work. This post came after the culminating article in a long drawrn out trial in the death of 7-year-old Nixzmary Brown. The New York Times article which was published on November 17, 2008 was titled Seeing Failure as Mother as Factor in Sentencing.
Charles’s pathos, unlike the NY Times and Glenn Sacks, is one that would like his readers to sympathize with the plight of Nixzmary Brown’s mother, Nixzmary Santiago. Whereas the prosecution in the case used Santiago’s status as a mother to convict her Charles insists that is the very reason she should have been, if not exonerated, then not so harshly punished.
Charles further establishes pathos by first making a personal comment in regards to the state of our country (Sometimes our country is truly depressing. For example…) and then forges ahead with a slice of supporting evidence from the NY Times article. In this case, his belief that a mother who allowed her husband, Cesar Rodriguez (the child’s stepfather) to beat her daughter continuously until she finally died did not deserve a longer prison sentence than what the actual murderer received.
He shows anger towards the prosecutor who in her final arguments used such inflammatory language as “Mommy”, and further asserting her belief that Ms. Santiago was “the one person that the little girl should have been able to count on”. Charles is further enraged that the female judge imposed a sentence on Ms. Santiago (convicted of manslaughter and two counts of assault) that was 17 years longer than the actual killers because she believed that the defendant had ignored her lawful duty as a parent to try and save the dying child. (Instead she bathed her and put her to bed while a neighbor called the police.) He even has some negative things to say against a female juror who was on the fence about convicting but after deciding that the mother showed intent to kill “by her lack of action.”
Ethos: Charles just seems to slowly fume throughout his blog on the unfairness of this woman’s sentence. He is clearly on her side. However, unlike Sacks who has a ton of statistics and obviously did his homework, Charles’ blog was an emotional “in the heat of the moment” “knee jerk” response to a criminal law issue which he believes did a terrible disservice to a woman, Nixzaliz Santiago.
He states that the killing is a sad thing but that it is only made sadder by the hard ships that Ms. Santiago has had to endure – learning disabilities, an abusive relationship with her father and her miscarriage right before the 7-year-olds death – this has led Charles to assert that any reasonable person would notice these facts and recognize a troubled mind, a woman who needed help. Punishment? He is not so certain “that she, who merely witnessed but did not act, should receive a more harsh punishment than the man who actually killed the child.”
Logos: Charles takes issue with the criminal justice system and societal norms that insist women act as mothers. “In this case Nixzaliz Santiago is being punished for failing to comport with an idealized motherhood…..And the failure of motherhood in this instance makes her equally (in fact more) culpable.”
He wants us to imagine if not believe that there is a world out there in which “real” mother’s can just stand by and let these awful things happen to their children. He doesn’t want us to look further for motivations – because with motivations come punishment - he just wants the reader to accept that many of these mother’s are simply afraid to act.
However, he discounts the intelligence of his reader and I believe sends out mixed signals in his third from last paragraph. Charles wants us to believe that because Nixzaliz didn’t actually do anything to contribute to her daughter’s death (nor did she do anything to save her life) that she does not deserve such a long sentence and in fact due to pre-existing emotional conditions she more than likely should have been hospitalized. Although he artfully skirts the fact that many people, both men and women, are convicted as accomplices in a wide range of crimes because they simply had knowledge of the act (didn’t even have to be there at the time) and did nothing to stop/intervene the perpetrator.
Nixzaliz’s sentence according to Charles was based on “restrictive gender norms and the over reliance on an approach to criminal justice that emphasizes punishment over treatment and rehabilitation.”
Toulmin
Glenn Sacks
1. Claim: Sacks makes the claim that society prefers to see women as victims instead of violent offenders. He introduces his reader to numerous statistics dealing with an increase of violent crime being perpetrated by women over a period of roughly 20 years. These statistics are used not necessarily to put fear into the male population but to make society aware of a trend that is only increasing so that we are able to act and get it under control. Sacks merely wants the criminal justice system and most of America to start punishing these women and stop giving them a slap on the wrist (as he sees it) by advocating an approach of treatment because they have been historically looked upon as the weaker sex.
2. Support: Sacks backs up his claims by offering three short but relevant and timely vignettes of three violent mothers and one wife who murdered their children and husband respectively – these crimes all happening the week before he wrote his article. In each of these cases the woman was portrayed as a victim first murderer second –defenses ranged from suicidal, post-partum depression, and scorned wife. Typically two of these three defenses are tailored purely towards women.
3. Warrants: That even though the crime rate in the U.S. was declining among women it had raised 200% in a 20 year period. However, men are still being blamed for these crimes, especially in the case of Andrea Yates, whose husband Randy was practically crucified for leaving her home alone with five children “in her condition.” Sacks wants his audience to see the facts and reflect on how we are not doing our women or our children a service by treating these violent women differently than a violent man. Sometimes you need more than medicine and talk therapy.
4. No he does not respond to rebuttals.
Charles
1. Claim: That a person who did not commit murder should not have received a longer sentence than that of the one who did the killing. And that if that person has a history of abuse or mental illness that they should be given treatment not a prison sentence.
2. Support: Being a blog the author really did not have any authoritative support of his views. He relied on a more emotional type of connection with the audience by portraying the mother as a victim – even though she may have been complicit in many of the previous beatings and she did nothing to save her daughter’s life. He attempts to show the many female participants in the trial as women who don’t have a heart and who can’t feel compassion. He contends that there are more than a black and white version of motherhood that most of us refuse to see – a version where a mother can just stand by and watch her child being abused because she was afraid to act.
3. Warrants: I am pretty sure that I have already laid out the authors warrants. The only other thing that I would add is his belief that women are victims of outdated societal attitudes in regards to motherhood and his belief that women are unfairly treated in the criminal justice system due to restrictive gender norms and an over-reliance on punishment rather than giving these women the treatment and rehabilitation that they so clearly need.
4. The author does rebut his claims with what appears to be a lawyer named David. David believes the punishment is fair and follows precisely to the sentencing structures that judges are supposed to follow – after all she was convicted of manslaughter and two counts of assault while he was only convicted of manslaughter. But Charles does not give in and continues to assert the claim that she was used to spread a message or to further along the states agenda.