Prior to beginning work on this final paper, review the Week 3 Comprehensive Case Study Report Topic and Outline assignment and your discussions in Weeks 1, 3, and 4 that pertain to this final paper.
For the final paper, you will take on the role of a death penalty mitigation expert hired by the defense attorney to work as a sentencing advocate on behalf of the client you chose in Week 1, who is the defendant. Based on the case and client, you will create a comprehensive case study report arguing against the death penalty for your client (the perpetrator). This report will contain an analysis of the psychological factors that may have contributed to the commission of the crimes in the chosen case and how these psychological factors should be considered a basis for a prison sentence less than the death penalty.
In your paper,
- Summarize the chosen case.
- Evaluate the biopsychosocial factors that led the client to commit his or her crimes.
- Explain the psychological, situational or social, and biological factors that you believe led to the offender’s criminality.
- Evaluate how these factors may have contributed to committing violent crimes.
- Identify whether your client suffered from a mental illness.
- Identify the diagnosis and how the diagnostic criteria were met.
- Evaluate the adverse childhood experiences (ACE) score you calculated for your client in the Week 3 Adverse Childhood Experiences discussion, to the extent that you were able to answer the questions based on what you could find out about your client’s history.
- Explain the impact of childhood trauma, abuse, and neglect may have on criminal behavior.
- Examine whether your client had any events in life that could be considered traumatic such that this could have influenced the criminal behavior.
- Explain what the scientific research says about the impact of trauma on criminal or violent behavior.
- Analyze any other mitigating factors that may provide a credible argument against a death sentence for your client.
- That is, was your client gainfully employed?
- Did your client lack a significant criminal history prior to the most recent offenses?
- Mitigating factors can be anything that humanizes your client and thus makes him or her seem like a candidate for a lesser sentence than death.
- Evaluate the totality of the mitigating circumstances found in your report.
- That is, how did all of the mitigating circumstances combined impact your client’s criminal behavior?
- Propose a specific psychosocial intervention based on your evaluation of the client and case, such as counseling, medication, restitution, and so forth.
- This proposed intervention should support your argument that the death penalty is not appropriate for your client based on these mitigating factors.
- Summarize your analysis and restate your intervention in the conclusion of your paper.
The Comprehensive Case Study Report
- Must be six to eight double-spaced pages in length (not including title and references pages) and formatted according to APA style as outlined in the University of Arizona Global Campus Writing Center’s APA Style
- Must include a separate title page with the following:
- Title of paper
- Student’s name
- Course name and number
- Instructor’s name
- Date submitted
