Resolved: The United States should Discontinue the Use of Capital Punishment

Thank you, this is a great debate. Harm to Prison Workers Yes, Death Row workers do suffer more, but to me it doesn't seem like their symptoms are much worse then normal prison workers. Moral disengagement is not necessarily a bad thing, it just acts as a shield so death row workers can sleep easier at night. Is that so bad? Yes, effective reform would make PTSD lower, but until that is implemented, (And it probably will not be for a while) it seems that Death row workers suffer only a little above normal prison workers. Incapacitation OK, glad to see that. Innocence I completely agree about the test. I have to disagree, not about the numbers, I don't know what the actual figure is, but how they got the numbers. To find the percentage of people on death row who are innocent, the team used survival analysis. Survival analysis is "a set of methods for analyzing data where the outcome variable is the time until the occurrence of an event of interest"In other words, they did not actually go on to death row, read each person's case, and see weather or not they could be exonerated or not, because that is impractical. However, mathematics cannot get an accurate picture of how many are innocent, at least not with this method. They use a sample, and that makes this less likely to be accurate. Quite honestly, the amount of people on death row who are innocent could be very high, even at 50%. On the other hand, it could be very low, at 1%. We don't know, because we don't know the accuracy of the sample. It could be normal. It could be abnormal. However, normal or abnormal, we will never know what the percentage actual population is as long as the study makes conclusions about the entire group based on a sample size we don't even know. Justice Ted Bundy is an exception, but he did happen. That doesn't change the fact that however rare, serial killers who break out of prison are incredibly likely to kill again. That's what I meant by saying that the killer would have a good chance of killing more people, if he/she escaped. Looking up a straw man, it is apparently misrepresenting, exaggerating, or completely fabricating someone's argument to make it easier to refute. I did not do this, and I didn't say or attempt to imply that. I said that given the choice, we should pick the one that makes sure innocent people who could be targeted would not be targeted (Because the killer is dead), verses the one that means the killer could break out and target said people. As I stated earlier in this round, there really is no way to tell if those statistics are accurate. The number could actually be much higher, the number could be lower. Yes, the execution cannot be reversed. However, prisoners on death row are typically there for a long time because of appeals, their attorneys working on ways to exonerate them, and time for an official pardon. There are even organizations dedicated to exonerating innocent people on death row. Between all of those, it stands to reason that most innocents would not be executed. In this debate, the burden of proof was on Pro to show that the United States should discontinue the use of capital punishment. This implies that the US should do so in every case. I have shown that to be untrue. Yes, its a small minority of cases with people like Ted Bundy, but sadly, they still exist. In most cases, Pro proved that the death penalty should be abolished. However, Pro failed to prove that the US should not kill dangerous serial killers like Bundy. Because of that, he was unable to completely prove the resolution of the debate. Thank you for reading this, please vote con. (to Pro) To you as well, this has truly shaped my views of this topic. While I still believe capital punishment is necessary in cases like Bundy's, in general the penalty should not be used. If you had shared BOP you definitely would have won. Thanks for the debate, this site needs more good quality debates like this one.