John Wayne Gacy Murder Trial Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 1

John Wayne Gacy Murder Trial - Essay Example John Wayne Gacy was an American who was convicted of murder and sexual assaults. Evidence indicated that between 1972 and 1978, he murdered and sexually assaulted at least 33 young men and teenage boys. Due to his serial killing, he earned the tag â€Å"Killer Clown†. Also, evidence indicates that the defendant was living a double life; that of committing murders and that of engaging in political and charitable activities. Murder trials show that he was convicted of more murders than any other person in the American history. Based upon this historic murder trial, therefore, this paper will analyze the case and document and respond to a number of issues relating to the case (Mendenhall, 1996).   Since the offenses that the defendant committed were â€Å"unusual†, it is important to understand the specific psychological characteristics and patterns that might be inferred from him. The testimony that was made during the trial indicated that Gacy had psychological characteristics and patterns that to a greater extent depicted his atrocious actions. Those who worked for him testified that he was violent and in most cases showed an intention to commit sexual assaults; actually, they testified that they had survived sexual and violent encounters with him (Amirante and Broderick, 2011). Friends, family and his former employees also testified that Gacy had mood swings and was â€Å"awfully tricky†, a trait he used to succeed in handcuffing them. Most of the sixty witnesses who testified during trial took notice of these characteristics and patterns. Since such characteristics are often associated with the insane, this was not the case with Gacy as psychologists had confirmed that he was sane, and he committed the offenses while in sound mind. Psychologists and medical experts who testified for the defense agreed that he was very intelligent and generous.

Interpretations of skill and skill that only few people have, but all Essay

Interpretations of skill and skill that only few people have, but all people can master - Essay Example These skills are so common that they always go unnoticed most of our life. On the other hand there is the functionality of voluntary skills. Voluntary skills are those skills that can be judged as specialized skill and had to be acquired by an individual with the dint of time management- noted or unnoted. It is this voluntary skill that gave birth to the concept of division of labor and ignited a spark to get the ball of civilization rolling. Picture this: the setting is somewhere in Southern France and the time is around the end of the last Ice Age. You will find a group of hunter-gatherers busy with their daily life. The men folks are coming back from the hard days hunt to their temporary settlement and the women of the tribe are separating the findings of the days work. And out in a corner there is an aged man busy with his Paleolithic tools- working hard to shape and sharp their jagged edges. Now, all the hunters are skillful huntsman and all the women are worthy gathers and this is almost inbuilt quality of the tribe simply because without these skills the tribe would seize to exist. It is but obvious that the sense of hunting and the eye for finding the needful elements scattered all around you requires a specific amount of skill and it should be learned to master them. Some of the women are better gatherer and some of the men are more skillful hunter than the other or average tribal. This could be termed that they have got a talent for hunting or gathering but the focal point of the skill is that this is not any specialized skill to mention as because the other members of tribe are attributed with the same skill, but the other maybe more or less skillful to their task. Thus, these skills could be termed as involuntary skills. On the other hand, the elderly person busy with his 'modernized' primitive tools is an example of the voluntary skill. It is not that he is not able to hunt but he has specialized himself into an occupation that no other in the tribe can share. It is not that this elderly Cro-Magnon is an Einstein of his tribe but it is this specialization that keeps him apart. Thus, this could be safely stated that "there are, however, certain skills that only a limited number of people have, which allow them to be more effective in areas that the average person is not. Even though only a small percentage of the population has mastered these skills, their benefits are too great to be kept to themselves. Conquering them requires time, dedication and patience. Devotion is challenging for the average person due to our busy lives." (Lamb, 87-88) In today's context, the job of a software programming professional is completely 'Greek' to a general person and the skill of a rocket engineer is completely unknown to a software programming professional. This is because these are completely specialized occupations and thereby absolutely voluntary in nature. But for both the software programming professional and rocket engineer driving is a common skill and they both are skillful in it in respective ability. Therefore we can summarize that driving is a involuntary skill that these two specialized persons share commonly. It is such a