The Death Penalty should be legal

== What is my advocacy? == My advocacy is simple -- abolish capital punishment. The resolution is vague. When the resolution says "the death penalty should be legal," it doesn't specify *where* Pro intends it to be legal. I can only presume everywhere. Therefore, I observe that, if I can prove that capital punishment should not be legal in even one place, the resolution is negated. Thus, the plan text: universally abolish capital punishment in the United States. This abolition of capital action does not include killing in action (e.g. police officers killing wanted criminal suspects in extenuating circumstances), or neutralization of active criminals (e.g. the killing of Osama bin Laden). All my plan will abolish is the sentencing of a convict to death by a jury due to the committing of a crime, after arrest and trial. == Net benefits == (1) Prevention of psychological damage People perform executions. And this has severe adverse effects. Empirical research demonstrates that executioners suffer from intense psychological damage as a result of them executing criminals. [1] "Every execution requires a team of executioners who watch the inmate in his or her final days, who strap the inmate to the gurney, who insert and reinsert the needles, and who remove the inmate from the gurney following the execution. They are the ones who deal with botched executions, who struggle with inmates fighting to stay alive, and who pull inmates away from their families when it is time for their final goodbye." [1] New Jersey's last executioner, and New York's prior executioner, both committed suicide as result of clinical depression that resulted from executions. "Executioners and wardens in Mississippi and Alabama all attributed their mental and physical health problems to their involvement with lethal injection." [1] Other empirical research also confirms that executioners suffer from psychological damage due to executions. [2] Jerry Givens, a former Virginia executioner, remarked, "The people who do the executions, they're the ones who suffer through it." [3] There are also multiple other witnesses to executions. All of them also often suffer from psychological problems, and have often committed suicide. "Carol Pickett, a minister who witnessed almost 100 executions in Texas, attributed his severe health problems to the stress involved with executions." [1] Journalists witness executions, and studies have reported on the emergence of anxiety symptoms among journalists who recently witnessed an execution. [1] Executions, in the process of psychological damage, create new victims. Robert Meeropol's parents were executed when he was six years old, and he only survived because of a supportive community. He still has the psychological damage that resulted. [1] "Felicia Floyd was just a child when her father murdered her mother in Georgia. When many years later, the State executed him for that crime, she felt victimized all over again." [1] Thus, the psychological damage caused by the death penalty is severe, causing clinical depression and suicide. (2) Reducing fiscal cost Empirical research has proven that the costs of the death penalty are immense, and outweigh that of life without parole (LWOP) cases. Data from Georgia shows that a capital case, which considers punishing a crime with capital punishment, costs around $2 million more than a non-capital case. [4] They involve, on average, five times more pre trial motions, five times more investigation by the defense team, 66 times longer to select and finalize a jury, 30 days more in court, twice as many lawyers, and longer and more complicated appeals. [4] In Georgia, a decision to seek the death penalty and a capital case can, individually, cost $3 million. [5] A study by the Loyola Law School reports that, since 1978, the current system of capital punishment in California has cost the city's taxpayers $4 billion *more* than that of life without parole cases. [6] "Recent studies reveal that if the current system is maintained, Californians will spend an additional $5 billion to $7 billion over the cost of LWOP to fund the broken system between now and 2050." [6] The California state debt in 2014 was 778 billion dollars, which means capital punishment is a huge waste of California's money. Since 1998, the state of Washington has spent $120 million on 5 prisoners on the death row, equating to a $24 million court system cost per person. [7] The state has a debt of $89.6 billion. The state of Maryland spent $186 million over five executions, meaning *each* of the five executions costed, on average, $37.2 million in the state, while the state debt is 94 billion dollars. [8] A study commissioned by the Nevada legislature says that a capital case in Nevada costs ~$500,000 more than a non-capital case. "Adjudicating death penalty cases takes more time and resources compared to murder cases where the death penalty sentence is not pursued as an option. These cases are more costly because there are procedural safeguards in place to ensure the sentence is just and free from error." [9] (3) Extradition The death penalty poses a significant barrier to extraditing terrorist suspects to the United States. Many countries, including the entirety of the European Union, have established a policy of not extraditing criminal suspects or criminals to the US if there is a possibility that the criminal might be given capital punishment, as those countries view it as a human rights violation. [10] This refusal to extradite impedes the United States' counter-terrorism efforts. [11] In 2005, the EU refused to extradite terrorist suspect "Mohammed A." for this reason. [11] (4) Customary international law The US is the *only* western country to retain the death penalty. Due to this, the US can be seen to endorse capital punishment. Multiple US citizens have, for example, been executed by the government of Singapore (and other strict governments) due to *nonviolent* offenses, e.g. possession of drugs. If the US abolishes the death penalty, then multiple countries will be seen as violating customary international law by executing a US citizen, a citizen of a country that does not support capital punishment. Without capital punishment, we can save American tourists. The impact is huge. Singapore has executed 400 people for minor offenses, most of them foreign. [12] Similarly, China has executed 53,000 people for minor offenses, many of them foreigners. [12] == Racism and prejudice == Many people in the US criminal justice system are executed by juries that discriminate based on ethnicity, and multiple other, irrelevant, factors. According to a study, "jurors in Washington are three times more likely to recommend a death sentence for a black defendant than for a white defendant in a similar case. The study examined 285 cases in which defendants were convicted of aggravated murder. The cases were analyzed for factors that might influence sentencing, including the number of victims, the prior criminal record of the defendant, and the number of aggravating factors alleged by the prosecutor." [13] In Louisiana, it is more likely for a person who killed a white to be executed than one who killed a black. "Even after considering other variables such as the number of aggravating circumstances, the number of concurrent felonies and the number of homicide victims, the odds of a death sentence were 97% higher for those whose victim was white than for those whose victim was black." [14] Socioeconomic status also matters. "Poor people are also far more likely to be death sentenced than those who can afford the high costs of private investigators, psychiatrists, and expert criminal lawyers." [15] A Supreme Court justice remarked, "This Court declared that the death penalty must be imposed fairly . . . or not at all, and, despite the effort of the states and courts . . . the death penalty remains fraught with arbitrariness, discrimination, caprice, and mistake." With such prejudice in the criminal justice system, it would be highly discriminatory to retain capital punishment. For these reasons, vote Con. == Sources == [1] http://tinyurl.com... [2] http://tinyurl.com... [3] http://abcnews.go.com... [4] Thaxton, Sherod. "Leveraging Death," Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 2013 [5] http://tinyurl.com... [6] http://tinyurl.com... [7] http://tinyurl.com... [8] http://www.urban.org... [9] http://tinyurl.com... [10] http://tinyurl.com... [11] http://tinyurl.com... [12] http://tinyurl.com... [13] http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org... [14] http://tinyurl.com... [15] https://www.aclu.org...