Section 1

Scheidegger, Kent. “Abolish the Death Penalty.” Intelligence Squared. April 15, 2015.                         Keynote Address.

Section 2

            Scheidegger’s main claim is that the death penalty should not be abolished. This claim he supports trough his sub-claims, which are it deters people from killing, in most capital cases there is no doubt who did it, and innocents would still be in prison with or without the death penalty. He supports these claims through a series of counter arguments. He starts with the fact that the studies that show the death penalty does not deter are not scientific but empirically proven to support his first sub-claim. He does not support his second claim with evidence as he seems to believe that it is common knowledge and the evidence used for the last claim is that death penalty cases are so expensive that the innocent would not be able to afford a good lawyer. Scheidegger concludes the same way that he started by stating that the death penalty should not be abolished.

Section 3

            The purpose of the speaker is to convince his audience that the death penalty should not be abolished. His immediate audience is intelligent people in the crowd, but Scheidegger seems to focus on a more general audience judging by the fact that he never uses excessively big words and his argument is very clear and easy to understand. He also ends his opening statement with a quirky rhyme that suggests he is trying to reach a broader audience. The speaker provides mostly counter arguments to the other side’s claims to prove his point. He does not provide new information that would push the audience to sway towards his side and thus does not do a good job of achieving his purpose. Although this may be true he does have time constraints, which could very easily impair him from stating something very important to his argument. Scheidegger’s debate is very different from other sources on this topic because he is in a debate and does not have time to come up with the best response possible and has to more often think on his toes.

Section 4

“An executed killer never kills again.”