Death penalty is never justified, under any circumstance

ForwardCermank has informed me that she will more than likely be unable to complete this debate. Nevertheless I will go ahead and post the round given that the weekend is around the corner and that she only has one round left to complete, lol, so maybe she may have a couple hours free to finish this one up.RebuttalR1) I must emphasize the extreme nature of the resolution. I find many of PRO's points to be centered around the typical PRO/CONs of the death penalty, how its current administration is flawed, and how an emphasis on rehabilitation is preferable over retribution. That's fine and all, and I may very well agree with PRO's assertions to that end...but that does not address the extreme cases that would question whether or not the death penalty is justifiable under ANY circumstance.a) I've already brought up the case of the Night Stalker, Richard Ramirez. Here we have a person who PRO would seek to redeem from his crimes, yet given Ramirez's beliefs, it's far more likely that he found redemption through his murder, rape, and torture of his victims. His childhood, where he suffered from epileptic seizures and was exposed to his brother's war stories and photographs involving raped and decapitated women, would easily point to causal elements as to how and why Ramirez developed the belief system he had (Satanism), where one of the creeds directs a Satanist to kill someone else simply because they bothered them (http://www.churchofsatan.com...).Again, such a person probably found redemption through killing...after all, it was his religion. Rehabilitation of such an individual would then involve allowing him to practice his religious beliefs by killing more people...which obviously does not fit with societal goals. Forcing him to renounce his religion would run afoul of several conceptions of freedom, to include the American First Amendment. As PRO herself has stated, "there are things scarier [i.e. worse] than death"...and many people would view losing their religion to be one of those things. Better to just kill him off...he is beyond society's conception of redemption. The judge that ruled his case stated that Ramirez exhibited "cruelty, callousness, and viciousness beyond any human understanding." (http://en.wikipedia.org...)b) Again, we can go much further than the Night Stalker in extremity. Imagine if someone had just annihilated one million people in a city and threatened to do it again in another city. This person was captured by the authorities, escaped within the week, and then carried out his threat. This person then threatened a third city with the same fate, to be carried out within one year's time. The authorities did everything they could, and successfully captured him again. This mass killer escaped yet again, and within one year's time, annihilated the third city. This person makes yet another threat. 3 million people have already died. The authorities are able to capture this criminal, but cannot keep him in a prison for whatever reason. They know that by killing him, they will spare the deaths of one million more people. They know he is guilty. IMHO the question becomes, why didn't the authorities kill him the moment they captured him the first time? Why wouldn't the death penalty apply in this case? Would you rather risk the destruction of society to uphold some lofty principle that "the death penalty is never justified, under any circumstance"? Who would be left to uphold this principle?Complete destruction of the society that would seek to redeem such a person is simply far too great a risk to take, so you execute him. Given this scenario, I will redraw PRO's chart: Incidentally, this scenario describes a war in which a society's way of life is at stake, threatened by an intractible and determined foe. Genocide is a common outcome in warfare. Wars are not all that uncommon. Enemy soldiers are executed all the time, many times without a trial. This is the death penalty under martial law.This scenario is enough to refute the resolution. I've already made this point in the prior round, and PRO has chosen to ignore it. R2) PRO makes a puzzling assertion, that "There is no reason to kill the guilty, he’s going to die anyway.What we CAN do is extract all we can from him, to lessen the pain of his existence."The act of extracting information is conducted at the trial, not during a life sentence. You can extract all you can from the person, and then kill him. R3) PRO argues that "[the criminal] still needs an adequate punishment." Does the death penalty necessarily need to deal with punishment? No. All that matters is that the death of the accused conveys a net benefit to society, and I have demonstrated at least one case of such with my revised chart.R4) To go back to the point about deterrence, my chart demonstrates how the execution of someone who intends to destroy the society that seeks to judge it deters the accused from destroying the society. That is enough to justify the death penalty...it need not serve as a deterrent to would-be society-killing aspirants.R5) The focus on the possibility of executing the innocent must be weighed through a cost-benefit analysis, without which this point has no validity. If one innocent out of one million guilty is wrongly executed, then this can be judged as a successful policy, as it would have achieved a 99.9999% effectiveness rate, which is better than most standards of quality in any field, profession, or occupation. Nothing is perfect, and I'm fairly certain that PRO acknowledges that we all die, it's just a matter of when.R6) PRO says that "Con doesn’t address the futility of death penalty as any form of solace, so that goes unrefuted," but PRO doesn't realize that if there's no one around to feel solace (because they've all been killed by the criminal), then her point simply does not matter.R7) PRO does not explain the assertion in her chart, how a killer can "undo[] some of the wrongs done by him" while in jail. This doesn't make any sense, and PRO does not elaborate what she means here.Conclusion- I find that much of PRO's case deals with conventional arguments surrounding the death penalty, but this is not a conventional resolution. It seeks to question the extreme cases, and to ask in those cases whether or not the death penalty is justifiable. I've met burden by demonstrating "yes". - I'll note again that determining cause for the criminal's actions is irrelevant to the death penalty - it is relevant to the trial.- PRO has her own case, and I've demonstrated how most if not all of it is irrelevant to the extreme cases I've brought forth:1) Some people find "redemption" in perpetrating their crimes, not in atoning for them.2) Some people are such a risk to society alive that matters such as deterring would-be-aspirants, punishing the accused, and providing solace to victims becomes irrelevant to the administration of the death penalty. Survival comes first.3) All that matters is whether or not the death of the accused benefits society. In extreme cases it does, as it prevents the accused from causing even more harm to society, or even destroying it outright. I've consistently made this point throughout this debate, and PRO's conventional argumentation does not address it.