单选题
{{B}}Directions:{{/B}} There are 5 reading passages in this part. Each passage is
followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are
four choices marked A, B, C, and D. You should decide on the best choice and
mark your answer on the ANSWER SHEET by blackening the corresponding letter in
the brackets. In the United States, 36 states
currently allow capital punishment for serious crimes such as murder. Americans
have always argued about the death penalty. Today, there is a serious question
about this issue: Should there be a minimum age limit for executing criminals?
In other words, is it right for convicted murderers who kill when they are
minors--i, e. , under the age of 18--to receive the death penalty?
In most other countries of the world, there is no capital punishment for
minors. In the United States, though, each state makes its own decision. Of the
36 states that allow the death penalty, 30 permit the execution of
minors. In the state of South Carolina, a convicted murderer
was given the death penalty for a crime he committed while he was a minor. In
1977, when he was 17 years old, James Terry Roach and two friends brutally
murdered three people. Roach's lawyer fought the decision to execute him. The
young murderer remained on Death Row (a separate part of prison for convicted
criminals who are sentenced to death) for ten years while his lawyer appealed to
the governor. The lawyer argued that it is wrong to execute a person for a crime
he committed while he was a minor. In the United States, the governor of a state
has the power to change a sentence from the death penalty to life in prison.
Nonetheless, the governor of South Carolina refused to stop the execution. Roach
was finally executed by electrocution in 1986. This is not the first time a
criminal was executed in South Carolina for a crime he committed when he was a
minor. In 1944, a 14-year-old boy died in that state's electric chair.
In Indiana, a 16-year-old girl was on Death Row for a crime she committed
when she was 15. Paula Cooper and three friends stabbed an elderly woman to
death in 1986. They robbed the old woman to get money to play video games. At
the time of the murder, the minimum age limit for executions in that state was
10. Cooper's lawyer appealed to the governor of Indiana to stop the execution
because the convicted killer was very young and because she was abused in
childhood. The Indiana governor, who favors the death penalty, said that he had
to let the courts do their job.
单选题
According to the passage, Cooper's lawyer ______.