1 Imagine being ready to die. On January 7, 1988, at 3:19 a.m., Texas began to execute convicted murderer Robert Streetland by pumping lethal drugs into his veins. Before he was pronounced dead seven minutes later, the telephone rang in the death chamber. The governor's office had received word that the United States Supreme Court was ready to consider a new motion of appeal. In the words of a prison spokesman, "The Supreme Court wanted to know where we were in the process, but by then it was too late."
             2 I stand before you today to discuss the issue of capital punishment. Should the death penalty be administered to those who are deemed guilty of murder in a court of law? Based upon your answers to my class survey, if this decision were left up to this class, 75 percent of you would sentence the guilty defendant to death by way of lethal gas, lethal injection, hanging, or electrocution.
             3 In my speech, I want to persuade you to reassess your view of capital punishment. My arguments will address the following issues relative to capital punishment: the injustice of capital punishment, the immorality of capital punishment, and capital punishment as a deterrent to crime. First of all, allow me to discuss the injustice of capital punishment.
             4 Evidence shows that capital punishment is a discriminatory means of punish-ment. Some refer to capital punishment as the poor man's justice. In other words, those without the capital get the punishment. As criminologist Hugo Adam Bedeau has stated, often people are sentenced to death and executed not because they have been found to be uncontrollably violent, but because they are too poor to purchase a first-rate lawyer to defend them. To quote Bedeau, "People who have been executed for capital crimes have historically been the losers in an arbitrary lottery, the victims of the disadvantages that almost always come with poverty."
             ...