#3 Speech Choice
How does one decide if the death penalty is a way of punishing a person who has committed a horrible crime? What is considered a horrible crime? In Canada we do not have capital punishment, the definition of capital punishment or the death penalty is when a person is put to death as a punishment for a crime. The execution can be by an electric chair or a lethal injection. One of the reasons I don’t think capital punishment is fair, is because in certain circumstances years later a person is found innocent. For example in 1959 there was a 14-year-old boy named Steven Truscott, who was found guilty of murdering his classmate. He was sentenced to death but later he was given a life sentence. Steven was scheduled to be hung on December 8th 1959, but in 1960 his death sentence was changed to life in imprisonment, because he was a young offender. In 1969, he was granted parole. For nearly 3 decades he lived quietly in Guelph Ontario raising a family. In 1997, he began to go public about his life and began to clear his name. Steven had always demanded he was innocent. In 2001 he applied for a review of his 1959 murder conviction, and in August 2007 the court reviewed 250 pieces of evidence and declared that Truscott’s conviction had not been properly represented. The court decided that it was impossible to give a new trial because of how much time had passed by. On July 2008 the government of Ontario awarded him 6.5 million dollars. “ I never in my wildest dreams expected in my lifetime for this to come true” said Steven Truscott, 62 at a news conference. The reason I bring up the case of Steven Truscott is because here we have a case of a 14-year-old boy wrongfully convicted and whose life was destroyed. Imagine if he has been executed, and later found innocent. That would be completely unfair, and therefore the death penalty would have not been appropriate. On the other hand there are some crimes that are so horrible that it makes me wonder if the death penalty should be applied. We all know in September 11th 2001 there was a terrorist attack lead by Osama Bin Laddin. At 8:46 am the plane crashed into the world trade center. 3,017 people, died from this attack. If it had not been for what Osama did there would be more human beings on this earth. They would have made more contributions to out world. The lives of others can never be quantified. In the long run didn’t he deserve to die? After all the pain and suffering he caused for others. Someone once said, “Do upon others what you would do upon yourself”. Osama killed countless innocent people, does that mean that he deserved to have what he did to other done upon himself? I don’t bring up Osama because it is a pleasant case or because it happened in Canada for the matter of fact. I bring it up because this is a case were many people strongly believed that this man deserved to die for all he had done

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