Resolved: The Death Penalty Should be Abolished

My opponent begins with the age old argument that the death penalty deters crime. This has been the most used argument by supporters of the DP for years and he is right, in the 1970's Issac Ehrlich did conduct research on the effects of the death penalty in terms of deterring crime. For a while this was good news for people who supported the DP. Unfortunately for Con as years pass more evidence is made available, much of it contradicting his 1970 studies. Nobel Laureate Lawrence Klein chaired a panel set up by the National Academy of Sciences where most of Ehrlich's research was discredited and considered unfit to shape public policy. [1] ___ Aside from this Michael Radelet and Ronald Akers conducted a survey receiving complete questionnaires from 67 out of 71 of former presidents of the three leading professional criminology associations in the United States: American Society of Criminology, Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, and the Law and Society Association. The consensus from these questionnaires was that the death penalty could do little to reduce the rate of violent crime. This survey was done in 1996. A similar survey of the most recent members was done in 2008 with identical results. [1] The criminology experts agree that it is not a deterrent. ___ Jeffery Fagan of Colombia Law school also determined that much of the data used in studies such as the ones con cited had used flawed data. An excerpt from the article shows his analysis on deterrence, " Execution would have to occur with sufficient frequency and with widespread knowledge among would-be murderers to create a credible threat considering the types of murders that might be eligible for execution. There is no sign of that, nor does it seem likely. For example, there were 16,137 murders in 2004, according to the FBI, but only 125 death sentences were handed out, and 59 persons—most of whom were convicted a decade earlier—were executed. There are no direct tests of deterrence among murderers, nor are there studies showing their awareness of executions in their own state, much less in faraway states. There is no evidence that if aware of the possibility of execution, a potential murderer would rationally decide to forgo homicide and use less lethal forms of violence". [4] ___ I would beg the question, why is it that over the years the rate of murders has gone down in states where this is no death penalty, equally or faster than in states with the death penalty? Statistics from the FBI violent crime page shows that the averages for homicide are higher in states with the death penalty than with out. Overall violent crime is down although if Con was correct in his assumption that the DP deters crime, why isn't the crime rate declining faster in states that have the DP? [2] ___ Even if Cons data is true in regards to recidivism, this could easily be used in favor of a mandatory sentence of life without parole. It is not specific to the death penalty. Criminals who can leave jail can commit crimes again. Life behind bars and the DP both prevent this. I understand that Con will bring up the fact the life sentences are released from prison sometimes. So are people on death row. It happens. An argument can be made with your statistics for either side and so for each side I see it as moot. ___ Con makes the case that in terms of justice the DP is the only just punishment for murder. He gives the example of a gruesome murder to appeal to our emotions and gain our sympathy. Most people who support the death penalty will tout similar stories. I'm more interested in reason and not emotion. We all must remember that the money used to kill these inmates is money from all our pockets. I wouldn't call it justice that a state may kill in the name of and with the money of millions who are against the action. Even though Americans have generally favored the DP there are millions of us who do not. It is not fair that peoples money is used to do something they find abhorrent and immoral. Even if you argue that the other side is being forced to pay for that persons meals and so forth, you are also paying for their detention. You are paying for the feeling they will have every morning when they wake up and realize they will never feel the outside world because of what they did. After death people do not know consequence, they do not know right or wrong. They are relieved of their conscience and of their past. If a family who suffered from a violent crime pays for life without parole, the criminal will face that punishment for a lifetime. I'm not going to justify murderers being released because I don't believe any cold blooded killer should be. Life without the possibility of parole is what I advocate in place of the DP. ___ The DP is also far more expensive to the tax payer. An average death penalty case runs the state up to 470,000 dollars in additional cost for public defenders and prosecutors although depending on the state cases can run into the millions. This does not even account for court costs. Death Row inmates are double the cost of life in prison inmates in terms of housing them. Taking into account how long people stay on the death row the numbers add up. The appeals process adds even more to the cost and there is no way to slow down that process with our justice system today. [5] The DP is not only a primitive form of punishment, it can set a precedent that we do not want. The Federal and numerous state government practice the DP and so can also modify how to earn it. As it stands there are a number of States that already have the death penalty as a charge for counts of child rape. Is the death penalty justified then. It has not been tried in the supreme court but in the 1990s the Federal government changed what actions can warrant the death penalty, one being drug trafficking and the other being Attempting, authorizing or advising the killing of any officer, juror,or witness in cases involving a Continuing Criminal Enterprise, regardless of whether such killing actually occurs. [3]. There are already multiple crimes that warrant the death penalty without there being a murder or anybody dead. I find it unwise that we should keep a policy that is tax payer funded and can be defined differently based on who is elected. If we condone it against one group of people now, we condone it against another group later, violent or non violent. ___ Finally an possibly the most understandable reason to object to the death penalty is the unintentional death sentence. Those people who were wrongfully accused, convicted, and killed. Samuel R. Gross and a team of researchers used the survival analysis model to determine that 4.1% of death row inmates are wrongfully sentenced. Out of the 1,320 executed they concluded that it is almost certain some of them were innocent. Either they are killed, later released based on evidence, or reduced to life in prison and must wait even longer for the justice system to correct itself. If con is to insist that the death penalty is necessary in these cases, he must also hold true that the few innocents killed are just an unfortunate consequence to the benefits of the DP. All the while this does not eliminate the possibility of more innocents being wrongfully sent to death row and the tax payer covering their wrongful conviction onto the most expensive rap sheet of the criminal justice system. [6] ___ I ask con to consider that the DP may be more costly, ineffective, and immoral than he had previously thought. Thank you [1] http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org... [2] http://www.fbi.gov... [3] http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org... [4] http://www.law.columbia.edu... [5] http://www.forbes.com... [6] http://www.pnas.org...