Koch Cites Bedau for benefit of essay.
Koch's Death and Justice: How capital Punishment Affirms Life" and David Bruck"s "The Death Penalty" are addressing the controversial Capital Punishment/Death Penalty topic. Each author uses a different approach to lay out their ideas about the issue. The brusqueness of Koch's personality and the harsh tone of his essay have fallen short of convincing the reader of "How Capital Punishment Affirms Life" [522]. Whereas Bruck's style allows him to persuade the reader to follow the logic of his essay.
Koch's essay starts off appealing to our emotions as in the cases of Robert Lee Willie who was executed for the rape and murder of an 18 year old girl [522] as well as Carl Shaw who was executed for the double slaying of two young people [522]. By appealing to emotions Koch has not let the reader think of what they are reading but instead react to the outrageousness of the crimes committed.
Instead, Bruck commences by leading the reader through a "moral" argument [528] of the death penalty. He attempts to persuade by citing examples such as the "more than 30 executions carried out over the last two years" [528] within the southern states. Showing an excessive use of the death penalty and allowing the reader to intelligently look at the facts of the death penalty make his point for him.
One of Koch's essential points implies that Adam Bedau said that the "false sentimentality to argue that the death penalty should be abolished because of the abstract possibility that an innocent person might be executed" [524]. This shows a complete disregard for life based on the theoretical assumption innocent people are not executed.
Bruck's rebuttal of Koch in regard to Adam Bedau makes it clear that Koch is selectively citing Bedau, who is an abolitionist, and that in reality Bedau "is at work now on an effort to determine how many wrongful death sentences may have been imposed: his list of murder convictions since 1900 in which the state eventually admitted error is some 400 cases long" [529].