Resolved: Capital punishment in Texas is unjust

The death penalty is costlyMy point with bringing upstatistics from states not including texas was to draw out the underlying reasons why the death penalty is far more expensive than life imprisonment - still, it is fair to demand statistics for Texas as well. According to the Texas deparment of criminal justice is takes $47.50 per day to house an inmate. Thus it would cost about $17,340 to house an inmate for a year and $693,500 for 40 years. This is far less than capitcal cases - it took $1 million to seek the death penalty against Levi King, and that does not include the cost of appeals. The average cost for a capital case is estimated to be $1.2 million. [1]Con's (unsourced) statistics include the costs of all the prisoners that are not on death row as well. To argue that they are an expensive is irrelevant - unless Con is arguing we excecute the entire prison population of Texas? For those inmates who are given the death penalty, it would have been cheaper to give the life incarceration. The death penalty is racistCon once again points out that the study I gave applies only to Philladelphia - but there is no reason to think that Texas is any less racist than Philledelphia. However, there are other studies to draw on that include Texas. A study involving Texas found that in 80% of cases race of victim was found to influence the likelihood of being charged with capital murder or receiving a death sentence, i.e., those who murdered whites were found to be more likely to be sentenced to death than those who murdered blacks. [2] Con says that there were more blacks in Philladelphia - this is completely irrelevant. The study found that black were more likely to be sentenced to death than whites who had comitted similar crimes. The population of blacks doesn't affect the study at all. Pro says that no program has ever not had flaws - this goes beyond flaws. It's race killing, and should be abolished. CounterpointsCounterpoint 1A: Capital punishment stops crime outside of prison.Con doesn't respond to the point that people should not be afraid of people who are locked away in high security prisons. He says that personal instances should not affect the debate - well, Con speculated that people feel unsafe without the death penalty without any evidence, so I speculate that people would feel unsafe with a discriminatory captical punishment system in place. Neither has any evidence, so these points cancel each other out. Con says we need the death penalty to promote the welfare of the maximum number of people, but gives no reason why. Counterpoint 1B: Capital punishment stops crime inside of prisonI'm not entirely sure what Con's response here is. Looking at the links he's provided doesn't seem to show any evidence that would support his claims here. As I said, if we kill people just because they could potentially pose a threat, we should kill people with lesser convictions as well. Without evidence, Con's point doesn't stand anyway. Counterpoint 2: Capital punishment fits the means of a crimeCon doesn't respond to the crucial point - this contention is irrelevant. The punishment 'fitting the crime' does not matter if we're using utilitarianism as a criterion for justice. Utilitarianism does not care if the punishment fits the crime, it cares about which actions will produce the greatest good. [1] http://lubbockonline.com...;[2] http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org...