Minimum Vs. Maximum

Minimum vs. Maximum

Being a news reporting is something that I wanted to do since I was a little girl. When I decided to further my education in July of 2009, I began doing research about news reporters; what is the job description, what is required of them etc. So, I understand the magnitude of researching information for a story. I am a very inquisitive person and I love finding out information about different things and this is why I decided to take the path that I am on.

From the moment I decided on the topic of capital punishment, I began finding all the information I possibly could find. I didn't know which way I wanted to go with the subject or what I really wanted to talk about because the subject is so controversial. The more research I did, the easier it was to decide what I wanted to further research about and get answers to. When I googled capital punishment all of these different sites came up of course, so I just clicked on them one by one and began reading the information. The information that I found was phenomenal. I decided to further research cases about people who were accomplices to murder or the master mind behind the operation that received the death penalty as a result or cases that had 2 or more people involved but one person getting the death penalty while others received a lesser punishment. The case that sticks out to me to most is the most recent execution of Teresa Lewis. Lewis was a woman who paid two guys to kill her husband and step son for insurance money. Lewis was sentenced to death while the two guys who actually shot her husband and step son received life sentences. Another case I found interesting is of Judith Neelley & Alvin Neelley, a married couple from Rome, Georgia who brutally raped and murdered 15 young female victims throughout Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee. Alvin was sentenced to two counts of life imprisonment in Georgia, and Judith received the death penalty in Alabama (Alarid, Marquart, & Burton, 1996).

According to the legal dictionary, a capital offense is one which is punishable by death and the crimes vary from state to state. As I research different states capital crimes all of them have one word in common: Murder. Whether it is in the first-degree, second-degree, rape or robbery it's still a murder. So my question is how is it that a murder can happen and one person gets life in prison and the other gets death? I have yet found the answer to my question. I would need to do more research about the different crime laws in each state because each state comes up with their own rules as far as punishment goes. I think this information will address my topic more fully. This missing information will help me get the answer I have been seeking. I would have all the information that I need in order to deliver a full story with all the details.

While gathering my information, I used a variety of