The death penalty should be abolished in the United States of America

The following is defense from Con’s rebuttals in Round 3. Here is the link to the Wolfers and Donohue paper that didn’t work before. http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org... DRC 1: Cost DRC 1.1: Plea Bargaining First my opponent talks about plea bargaining. First I’ll take a look at plea bargaining in relation to the death penalty. Most death penalty supporters, when talking about plea bargaining, say it’s just a bargaining chip that prosecutors use to secure life without parole please. First off, the data about plea deals and their relation to the death penalty is lacking. Comprehensive studies have found no connection between the death penalty and the frequency of plea bargaining [1.] In fact, there is very little difference between DP states and non-DP states when it comes to plea bargaining, and it’s effectiveness to gain long prison sentences [2.] So now we know that plea bargaining isn’t a good argument against the DP, but I will bring it more to the point now, concerning cost. My opponent states that the studies I provided don’t take plea bargaining into account, but hasn’t actually shown that plea bargaining is a common procedure. My opponent simply states that plea bargaining is used to avoid the cost of the DP, but provides no source for it. The source that they did provide was a link to a journal which states the following “empirical research addressing the use of the death penalty as leverage is largely lacking.” The link that my opponent cited even agrees that the prominence or any stats concerning the use of the death penalty as leverage in plea bargaining is not supported by any concrete research. Also, Pro hasn’t actually found any faults in the studies I cited, he assumes that they have not taken into account plea bargaining. However if there is a DP case where plea bargaining is involved, would that case still be counted as a DP case? If so, then it would’ve been included in my studies. If it wasn’t counted as a DP case, then it’s completely irrelevant to the topic at hand. Both ways, this plea bargaining rebuttal is unfounded and irrelevant. DRC 1.2: The Studies I Mentioned Earlier My opponent makes some mistakes here. First off, I’d like to mention that they said “The costs for LWP are usually over exaggerated, as the amount of time a prisoner serves and what type of prison it essentially is playing into factor.” My opponent basically made an argument for me. I’d like to remind them that they were trying to prove that LWP costs MORE than a DP case, not less.Secondly, they use the study out of Seattle when comparing costs with California. I actually have a study [3] concerning the DP costs in California specifically, by Judge Arthur Alarcon and Prof. Paula Mitchell. This study concluded that the cost of on DP case in California comes out to $4.6 billion overall. This is includes trial costs, automatic appeals and state habeas corpus petitions, federal habeas corpus appeals, and the costs of incarceration. I’ll break down the costs per case. The study states that the cost for housing death row inmates comes to $90,000 per year [3.] The average time, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics [4,] spent between sentencing and execution was, in 2012, 190 months. Which is 15.8 years, on average. So, the annual cost of $90,000, multiplied by the 15 years the inmate will spend being incarcerated before death row, and the cost comes out to $1.35 million, simply for housing death row inmates. So add that to the costs. Federal Habeas Corpus appeals add on more costs in fact. The CJA panel of California [3,] spends roughly $635,000 per case, and the Federal Public Defender Capital Habeas Units [3,] spend roughly $1.58 million per case. Add these two figures together, and it comes out to $2.215 million. Now we’ll add the previous cost for housing inmates, 1.35 million, and it comes out to $3.565 million per case. But we’re not done yet, the study found that capital trials in California cost on average an additional $1 million more than non-capital cases. How do we know this, the total trial and pre-trial costs since 1978 comes out to $1.94 billion. Divide this by the total amount of capital trials in California since 1978, 1,940 approximately, and you come out to a total of $1 million per case, in pre-trial and trial costs. Add this to our previous total, and we have a final amount of $4.565 million per case. This is the true cost of a death penalty case in California, and it’s more accurate than the numbers my opponent presented, which were out of a Seattle study, not California. Even if we use his inaccurate numbers, the cost of keeping a prisoner in jail in California, plus the cost of a LWP case in Seattle, this comes out to $4.422 million. This inaccurate figure, when compared to the accurate figure of the cost of the DP in California which I presented, $4.565 million per case, you can see is considerably cheaper. My opponent then talks about how the cost of the DP caries among different states and jurisdictions, however he only provides one example, Texas, in which the costs were the SAME. However I provided many more examples, including California, Seattle, and Washington, where the costs of a DP case were significantly HIGHER than those of a LWP case. My opponent has not even mentioned the reports from Washington and Seattle, choosing only to focus on the California figures, which I already proved to be incorrect. DRC 1.3 – Deterrence My opponent briefly mentions deterrence, but this has nothing to do with the cost, and I already refuted this in detail in Rounds 3 and 1. In conclusion, my opponent did not object to the results of the studies out of Washington and Seattle, so those arguments were dropped. My opponent simply targeted the cost in California, which I have here proved is still higher for DP cases than non DP cases. It stands, the DP costs more than LWP. DRC 2 – Errors DRC 2.1 – The system is not foolproof My opponent here says that my statements of the system not being foolproof is incorrect. Because they have a chance to be released if they are innocent. However that wasn’t the point of my original statement, which was showing the ridiculously high amount of post-conviction exonerations, which were overturned many years later. This in itself shows the justice system is not foolproof, if it was, then these people would not have spent years in jail and had their lives ruined. The point I made here was that the justice system can, and has made mistakes, and that is a reason it should not be allowed to carry out irreversible punishments, when in the past it has demonstrated it can make mistakes, and convict innocents. DRC 2.2 - Wrongful Executions My opponent states here that I must prove that the wrongful executions “outweigh” the number of innocent lives saved from those executions. This is a straw man. My opponent hasn’t at all justified keeping a system in place, which has in the past killed innocent people. Instead he simply directed the conversation to his statistic which states that somehow, one execution prevents 3 murders, a statement and study which qualified and respected law professors have shown to be false. [Refer to Round 3, RC2 – Deterrence.] This wrongful executions argument still stands, my opponent has not refuted it at all, and has not shown how it is morally justified to keep a system in place where innocents can and have been killed. DRC 3 – Ineffective at Reducing Crime DRC 3.1 – Correlation does not imply Causation My opponent here states, and argues that correlation doesn’t equal causation. I actually do agree with that. And I will explain why this is beneficial to my side of the debate. This entire argument was me showing how the DP HASN’T BEEN EFFECTIVE AT REDUCING CRIME. This argument has included many things, such as DP states having higher crime rates, and the rise and fall of the number of executions not correlating with the rise and fall of murder rates. My opponent actually proves me right here, because they themselves are saying that the DP doesn’t correlate to lower or higher crime rates, I can even quote him, “I'm not trying to argue that this was because of the abolishment of the DP, but rather different variables went into play.” No correlation between the DP and crime rates favours abolition in the end. The fact that even my opponent has tried to show that there is no correlation between the DP and crime rates, shows that it’s obvious, the DP is ineffective at crime. There are variables that in reality do affect the crime rates, the DP isn’t one of them. In the end, no correlation between the DP and crime rates is what I was trying to prove, as there being none shows that it is ineffective at reducing crime, and my opponent even agrees with me, and tries to prove it himself in their rebuttal concerning this. This concludes my defences and counter-rebuttals. As agreed, I have not added counter rebuttals to what my opponent wrote in Round 4, because they’d have no chance to respond to them. I’d like to thank Tajshar2k for this fun and interesting debate. Sources 1. http://www.deathpenalty.org... 2. http://www.cjlf.org...3. http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org... 4. http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org...