Death Penalty

Through statistics, newspaper articles, internet findings and information from the US General Accounting office today I am going to persist in convincing my target audience that the death penalty is not a part of the correctional system . I will begin with a quote by Richard Dieter, an executive director from the death penalty information center, "The punishment of criminals by society is for the protection of society from punishment. But since such treatment is directed to the criminal rather than the crime, its great object should be his moral regeneration. The state has not discharged its whole duty to the criminal when it has punished him, nor even when it has reformed him. Having raised him up, it has further duty to aid in holding him up." The death penalty is the pole opposite of that approach. Once a person has been executed, there is no more "raising him up," nor "holding him up." This brings us again to my claim that the death penalty is not a part of the correctional system. I would suggest that it is much more a part of the political system. Today I will speak on four points 1) Who receives the death penalty 2) How some are innocent 3) The costs of the death penalty and 4) The victims.