Just moved into a new house: there are a few of these trees. What are they? Are they dying? Should I pull them?

Hard to tell from a distance but they look like a juniper. The brown is permanent so if it were mine, I would remove them, it's not an attractive sight I would want to see in my garden.

Can you take a piece of the plant and put it on white printer paper to get a clearer picture of the individual leaves so that we can identify it? It looks as though someone may have pruned it too hard. When you cut back into the old wood on a conifer it often will not regrow from that spot and it will stay brown. But it's also possible that if left alone some of the green parts may fill in.