Why the death penalty is ineffective and should be banned by the house

Why the Death Penalty is Ineffective and should be banned by the House. -I want to thank my opponent once again for accepting this debate. Death Penalty is a punishment in the form of an execution. This punishment is given to people who have committed some sort of a serious crime. For example, murder is the most common one. While years and even centuries have been going by, the capital punishment/death penalty was becoming scarcer in many countries, and in fact, it has been abolished in some parts of the globe. But even until this day, the death penalty remains active. The most common place it is practiced in is the United States. All European Countries, Canada, Australia, Russian and Mexico have all chosen to abolish this type of punishment for various reasons. I believe that the death penalty shall no longer be active in the United States. There are various reasons this form of punishment should be abolished. Here are the reasons: Death penalty is expensive and tax payers waste millions of dollars on it. Ethnicity and race plays a role in death penalty. Death penalty does not minimize our crime rate. Lastly, death penalty endangers multiple innocent lives. http://simple.wikipedia.org... http://www.deathpenalty.org... 1.Death Penalty is expensive: The reason for death penalty being expensive is because of the long judicial processes and investigations. The process of investigation exists in death penalty to make sure that innocent people are not executed, but sadly this cannot be fully avoided. A life sentence without a parole is much cheaper than the death penalty; it actually saves a lot of money. The millions of dollars that tax payers spend on the death penalty could actually be used to support and fix much broader problems in our society. For example, we could have spent this money on the homeless; the children in need, hospitals, construction, police, education, etc. etc. in California, taxpayers pay $90,000 per execution. In five years California could have saved $1 billion dollars if it was not for the death penalty. California spent over $4 billion dollars on the executions in 1978. Plus, $184 million are being spent on the trial process as well. According to researchers, they suspect that the death penalty will reach $9 billion by 2030. Due to the amount of California"s death row inmates, California spends $63.3 million annually on these inmates. The yearly cost of the death penalty system is $137 million. A life sentence would be $11.5 without parole. http://www.deathpenalty.org... http://lls.edu... 2.Death Penalty is based on race: The specific race of a death row inmate decides whether he lives or dies. A study has been done in 1990 by the General Accounting Office. The study has shown, "in 82 percent of the studies [reviewed], race of the victim was found to influence the likelihood of being charged with capital murder or receiving the death penalty, i.e. those who murdered whites were more likely to be sentenced to death than those who murdered blacks." Senator Russ Feingold once quoted, "We simply cannot say we live in a country that offers equal justice to all Americans when racial disparities plague the system by which our society imposes the ultimate punishment." Here are the statistics: http://www.deathpenalty.org... 3.Death Penalty does not minimize our crime rate: A study called "DO EXECUTIONS LOWER HOMICIDE RATES?: THE VIEWS OF LEADING CRIMINOLOGISTS" by Michael L. Radelet in 2009 has shown that capital punishment does not minimize the crime rate in the United States. After the executions of many inmates, specifically, the ones that killed police officers have not stopped criminals from causing the same crime (killing police officers). "We find no consistent evidence that capital punishment influenced police killings during the 1976-1989 period. . . . [P]olice do not appear to have been afforded an added measure of protection against homicide by capital punishment." (W. Bailey and R. Peterson, Murder, Capital Punishment, and Deterrence: A Review of the Evidence and an Examination of Police Killings, 50 Journal of Social Issues 53, 71 1994). FBI Uniform Crime Report has concluded that the states with the least executions were the states where officers were least endangered. The south has an 80% execution rate, which is the most dangerous for police officers. California, the state with the most death row inmates is the state where most officers were killed (1998). Statistics: Total1998199719961995199419931992199119901989 South29229322432243128293132 West1251415623181113799 Midwest12110111581611820148 Northeast80371081298779 http://www.deathpenalty.org... 4.Death penalty endangers innocent lives: In this section I will present the innocent lives of people who have been taken away by an execution. The people are: Carlos De Luna, Joseph O"Dell, and Leo Jones. 1.Carlos De Luna (Texas): Carlos De Luna was convicted in 1983 and executed in 1989. Carlos was of accused of stabbing a clerk at the store, Wanda Lopez and leaving her to die with critical wounds. In 2006 the Chicago Tribune investigation has reported that Carlos has been innocent and that the wrong man was executed. People began suspecting Carlos Hernandez, a criminal who had fairly similar crimes. Later, Hernandez confessed to the murder. 2.Joseph O"Dell (Virginia): Joseph O"Dell was convicted in 1986 and executed in 1997. Joseph O"Dell was charged with murder and rape. Soon, after his execution people began doubting that it was him because his DNA samples did not match. O"Dell"s wanted to prove his innocence by having a second DNA test, but it was revoked. After his death, his DNA was tested and it has proven that he was innocent. 3.Leo Jones (Florida): Leo Jones was convicted in 1981 and executed in 1998. Jones was charged for murder of a police officer in Jacksonville, Florida. While he was being interrogated, he was forced to sign a confession that it was him who was responsible for the murder. The policemen who forced him to sign a confession immediately lost their police licenses. People began pointing out that there were other suspects with similar crimes. http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org...