Persuasion-The Death Penalty

I personally was more persuaded by Kroll because I am more affected by pathos (and also probably because I agree with Kroll more than Mencken.) Kroll used a lot of words and phrases with a specifically negative connotation to express his opinion, such as his description of the "nakedly barbaric" killing of his friend: "His head began to roll and his eyes closed, then opened again. His head dropped, then came up with an abrupt jerk and rolled some more. It was grotesque and hideous...we were in the middle of something indescribably ugly. Not just the cold-blooded killing of a human being, and not even the fact that we happened to love him-but the ritual of it, the participation of us, the witnesses, the witnessing itself of this most private and personal act." He writes with a raw passion that shows that despite what his friend did, he should not have been killed in the manner that he was. This in itself is a more convincing factor to me than katharsis, a use of the death penalty as a source of revenge.