Tyler Page

Day 15

"If everyone is here, I say the meeting can start." The captain of the speech and debate team, Mary, said. I swear sometimes I have to force myself to go to these meetings. "We have our next meeting this Saturday, you all know what to do."

I went over to the back room where our coach, Mr. Rain, had 12 computers. I sat down at one and pulled up my paper. I did expository and oratory. They're similar. Expos is where I explain a topic to someone. I inform them about it and there is a poster board or some type of props to show something about the topic. Oratory is trying to get the audience to agree with you, you can't use props or anything like that. They're both tons of fun. If you didn't guess, both of them have to do with killing.

I spent some time looking into recent kills to see if I could add more to either of my speeches but came short. I walked back out into the classroom and told them that I do a practice run to see my time. I started with my Oratory.

"Ready whenever you are," Mr. Rain said, getting the stopwatch ready.

I took a deep breath before I started. "Lethal Injection, Electrocution, Lethal Gas, Firing Squad, and Hanging. Which one would you choose? 31 states of the United States still use capital punishment to punish criminals. Starting with 1976 to July 28, 2017, 1,458 people were executed. Of those people, 144 of them were proven to be innocent. What does this mean for the system? Flaws in the system are overlooked by the US government and no one is doing anything about it. In this speech, I will be going over the flaws with this system, starting with guilty vs innocent-" I stopped as the door opened and Avery walked in.

"Sorry." She said as she saw me.

"Welcome," Mary said as she got up to talk to Avery. She was going to tell her about the different events and see if she wanted to join.

"Tyler, will you continue?" Mr. Rain asked.

"Yeah, sorry." I took another deep breath.

I heard Marry say, "Tyler is about to continue his oratory speech, if you want to see what that's like. It's a speech trying to change your opinion on a topic." Avery nodded, taking a seat, all eyes on me.

"Should I continue or start over?" I ask, having a new audience.

"Just continue from where you left off." I nodded.

I closed it eyes thinking back to where I left off. "The government was established in 1789 by the founding fathers of United States of America. They did this with the Declaration of Independence. In the Constitution, it states that 'we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.' We are given life as a right. It's not a privilege that can be taken away. It's something that the founding fathers thought to be a right to everyone.

"Next I would like to bring up the number again about how many people have died but then we're proven to be innocent. 144 people. Many people who are being tried for a felony, up to 95% result in a plea bargain. They could have no evidence presented and may never get an appeal. People do this out of the fear of what could happen if they don't. They fear that things could go end up worse than if they just gave in. This also leads to people being wrongly convicted. A study done by Samuel Gross said that there is a 4.1% error in the system. This means about every 24 people out of 100 are sentenced to death are innocent. One is too many to be wrongly executed.

"Now I would like to look at my last point, is the death plenty unfair or a cruel punishment? This is all matter of opinion. Some may believe that this a reasonable thing to do. Others, like me, think that killing someone for their crimes is unfair. The criminal will never have a chance to redeem themselves from their crimes. They are gone from this world and can never be given another chance. Another point is pain. Each of these methods has different amounts of pain a person will feel, whether it's mental or physical. Any type of human suffering is wrong and cruel. This leads back to the 8th amendment. When it comes to the law, it's meant to be fair to the people, the accused and the accuser. It fair for both of them. Killing one creates a problem with this idea.

"To conclude, capital punishment is wrong to use our society. It breaks the construction in two ways and may not always be correct. Even though many believe that with the death penalty we are deterring people behavior with crimes but this is untrue. Having the death penalty is hurting the US as a nation and is not helping anyone. To say simply the death penalty is not a useful punishment to have in our country. It is unfair and unjust. It is unfair, no matter the crime, to have people suffer as a consequence of their actions. Thank you." I looked down, showing my speech was over. Everyone clapped. I looked up to Avery. Since she knew what I do, what will she think?

"Great job, Tyler. You have it well memorized and have a great standpoint. You could add a sentence or two about the other side and a short story in there as well but other than that, great job." Mr. Rain said.

I nodded and walked over to Avery. "Mary, I got this," I said as I took a seat next to her. Marry nodded and left. "So, what do you think?"

"I thought you would be all for it," Avery said, smiling.

"Well, you're wrong. Why would I let a corrupt system kill people, some who don't need to die?"

"You're right, you should do it." She whispered.

"Whatever you think."

"I did like it though. It was well said."

"Thank you. So what did Mary tell you?"

"She explained most of the events, what do you do?"

"I do oratory, what you just saw, and expository which is just informing your audience about a topic."

"Those sound like a lot of fun. You do any of the acting ones?" I laughed.

"Me? Acting?"

"Maybe you could? We could do it together?"

"I'll have to think about that."

"Okay. So what do I have to do for the informing one?"

I smiled. "You just have to write a paper on a topic, anything you want and make a poster board. It's not hard." She nodded. I got up and so did she. We walked to the back, my computer was still open. I took a seat and she did next to me. We spent the rest of the time researching and writing.

Once practice was over I asked if Avery wanted to come over.

"Are you sure you won't kill me?" She asked.

"Yeah, you're the one who wants to learn."

We walked over to my apartment. It's not such a bad place. It was a cheap place to live. One bedroom, a whole bath, and kitchen and a living room. It was nice.

"Do you live here alone?" She asked, noticing the lack of other people.

"Yeah, my parents died last year in a shot up. I convince the state to let me live by myself."

"That must have been hard." She said, voice full of sympathy.

"It's fine. I've got over it." The fact was, found everyone who was there and killed them. I did love my parents and was said that they were dead.

"I'm sorry."

"It's fine." I looked around. I cleaned my place not too long ago. There was no blood or anything. "Do you want to see my room?" I walked towards the door, Avery following closely.

My room was simple, having a bed, a desk, and a dresser. The walls were an off-white color and it was wood floor.

"I like it. Where do you keep-"

"Over here." I walked over and moved my bed and pulled up a few of floorboards, exposing my collection.

"Wow." That's all she has to say? I thought. "I can't believe this." I had a few different type of knives, a gun or two, some rope and a few other things.

"It's no much," I said, looking down at it.

"Where did you get all this from?"

"Some was my parents most I found in pawn shops."

"Wow."

"Wow is right." I laughed. "Do you want to start?" She nodded.

I hope you liked. I really like to write speeches. I don't think all the information is correct, so don't quote me.