Mencken vs Kroll on the Death Penalty

Out of the two, I would have to say that the Kroll piece was much more effective, if only because it was much more connected and together as compared to the Mencken essay. With Kroll's essay, the pathos was so heavy you could have cut it with a knife; with Mencken, the appeals were scattered, if they were even there. While I do not believe an argument can be very good if the only thing it relies on is pathos, compared to the scattered nature of Mencken's essay, Kroll's was more effective. With Mencken, I had not the slightest idea who he was aiming his essay at, and at about the first mention of religion, the entire argument slides into a downward slope of hypothetical after hypothetical, until it finally reaches what was probably the entire point of Mencken's argument: him talking about how the execution process should be much quicker. With that he manages to backdoor you into what he believes, without really having any substance. However, the Kroll essay is a narrative, one that takes a clear bias as it tries to get you to agree with Kroll. The effect, while not quite that much for me, was much better than Mencken's if only because of the cohesiveness of the essay, rather than Mencken's scatterbrained attempt to make a point, which he only got to after insulting the opposition and trailing off into tiny rant after tiny rant. My assertion that the Kroll essay is better is more so based on the fact that the Mencken essay was anything but persuasive to me, rather than the fact that it was all that amazing.