Along with abortion, legalization of Marijuana, and laws regarding gun control sits another social issue dividing American citizens: capital punishment. Those who support punishment of prisoners for heinous crimes through state-regulated execution often cite the term “an eye for an eye.” Their argument also naturally gravitates towards saving money, as cost of housing prisoners is a burden of taxpayers. Denouncers of capital punishment generally refer to the legality of the statute through the Eighth Amendment, which protects against cruel and unusual punishment. The main points of the speech were not meant to sway the audience one way or the other, but to give informative, unbiased facts about the death penalty through the speaker’s firsthand …show more content…
Dow, was simply to inform the audience about why offenders commit the crimes that are prosecuted, leading to conviction, and a death sentence. Dow’s main points referred to the dysfunction of the offender’s upbringing as a youth and the offender’s time spent in juvenile justice system. He also cited legal intervention for death row inmates and how capital cases, with potential to be tried for the death penalty, are being tried more for a “life-without-parole” punishment by the Texas juries, yet inmates are still being executed at an astonishing rate of tow per month. Dow stated the feeling of shock that came over him upon looking at his 11-year-old son, Lincoln, and remembering a client of his who fit the mold for growing up in a dysfunctional family. The client, named Will, was the son of a single mother diagnosed with schizophrenia, who when Will was five years old, chased him through the house with a butcher knife while she told him she was going to kill him. He was taken away by the state and sent to live with his brother, while his mother was sent to a psychiatric hospital. Will’s brother took his own life with a gunshot blast to his heart when Will was eight. After bouncing around from family member to family member throughout the next year Will was on his own by the age of nine. Dow said, “I looked at my son and realized when my client, Will, was his age, he’d been living on his own for over