English: Book Report: Speech - Capital Punishment July 03, 1998 Click Here For Research Papers Online! speech Capital punishment Leopold and Leob were two nineteen year olds. One day they kidnapped and murdered a fourteen year old boy. When asked why they had done it they replied " we wanted to see what it was like" Leopold and Leob were spared the death penalty and instead sentenced to a life sentence. During their prison life their combined accomplishments include: teaching illiterates to read, making developments in the malaria world war 2 project, and writing a grammar book. The significance of this is that they accomplished more alive than dead and helped their community. Today it is my intent to persuade to see how the death penalty is cruel, wrong and ineffective. I have two main points and they are: How the death penalty does not deter crime, how it is barbaric and wrong. Deterrence is the act of someone being suaded not to do something. The death penalty does not deter crime. Its as plain and simple as that. Studies have shown that the death penalty does not deter crime. The majority of murders are committed out of rage, they are not thought out in advance, something makes the murderer want to kill the person and he goes berserk and kills them. In instances like this fear of the being sentenced to death would not make them think twice. Even if the murder was planned out the criminal would take steps to make sure he is not caught. So in this instance also there would be no deterrence. Also when a person is insane or mentally retarded fear of being put to death would not affect them. . There is and example of a murder case such as this. A retarded man named Johnny Penenry brutally murdered a woman, he did not even think about the consequences of his actions, He was considered retarded and sentenced to death. Furthermore if a person knows that he will be released on parole then he wont be as afraid of going to jail. The death penalty has not deterred crime, infact the number of people put on death row has risen by 1500 people since 1953. Whenever a highly publicized homicide case is covered by the media the murder rate goes down however when the case is over it goes back up. Infact the number of homicides has fell since Canada abolished the death penalty. Some people say that if we did not have the death penalty there would be no justice. But the way I see it is why kill someone and end it quickly when you can have them work their entire lives helping others and doing community service. Some people also say that it costs too much too feed a criminal every day and put a roof over his head, but if the government puts the criminals to work and keep the criminals pay then it would cost nothing to keep up jails or build new ones. Now for my second point. The death penalty is barbaric and goes against everything that America stands for. The eighth amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. While the death penalty is not unusual it certainly is cruel and the supreme court agreed with this between 1967-1976 in this period of time the death penalty was illegal everywhere in the USA. Many people agree that the death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment and have started organizations to protest. Even people who agree favor the death penalty agree that it is a relic of barbarianism. As an example the word "capital" in Latin means "having to do with the head" now I think that all of you have the wits to know the significance of this. Even Ben Franklin was against the death penalty. The constitution also says that every human has the right to life . There are currently five accepted forms of the death penalty. They include: Electrocution, The Gas Chamber, Hanging, Lethal Injection, and being shot by a firing squad. . The death penalty is also ineffective it has so many restrictions that it is very hard for a person to be executed in many instances all a person would have to do is be considered legally insane and be spared. Some of the restrictions are: The insane, minors, and pregnant women may not be sentenced to death. And even if a person is found guilty he can appeal to a higher court for a whole new case. To summarize my speech my purpose was to persuade you and I told you about how the death penalty does not deter crime and how it is barbaric and ineffective. And to conclude IM going to read you some shocking statistics about the death penalty. Back to School Sucks