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A Persuasive Speech On The Death Penalty

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Persuasive Speech:
Why I Believe the Death Penalty Should Be Abolished Hello, everyone. My name is Devlin O’Connell and I am going to be speaking to you today about why I believe the death penalty should be abolished. There are three factors that I base this argument off which surround ethics, efficiency, and expenditure. In relationship to ethics, I would like to begin with a quote by human rights activist, Desmond Tutu, “To take a life when a life has been lost is revenge, not justice.” Capital Punishment, also known as the Death Penalty, is described as a government practice where a person is put to death by the state as a punishment for crimes such as murder, treason, espionage, and genocide. While it may seem unlikely that many people would be convicted of a few of the latter crimes, there were nearly 3,000 people on death row in the last year. Of those 3,000 people, 117 were found to be innocent. It is predicted that at least 3% more of those sentenced would have been exonerated with enough time and resources. Let that sink in. An untold number of innocent people have been executed. As it is, many relatives of victims have said that they do not wish for their relative’s killer to be put to death. Circling back to Tutu’s quote, the government is not providing these families with justice – but with revenge.
We are “perpetuating a cycle of violence unworthy of a civilized society,” to quote Bernice King, “retribution cannot light the way to the genuine healing that

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