The death penalty should NOT be allowed

First counterargments round:Rebuttal for self responsibility: Self-responsibility should only be discusses when talking about crime as a whole - it has nothing to do with the death penalty individully. 4% is not a small number, think of the ratio (1 in every 25 people) and you will realize that if you took an average classroom amount of kids to jail for crimes - one of the kids in the class would be innocent. The criminals can be self-responsible for the crimes they committed by serving and taking a punishment for their actions - wheither death penalty is legal or not - the criminal will still be held responsible for his actions. So how would your point be relavent for this spacific topic since we are not discussing crime in general?---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Rebuttal for deters crime: But the death pentalty is murder itself - either way, the government is killing people; and it actually does influence crime rate. Take this chart for example: Deterrence: States Without the Death Penalty Have Had Consistently Lower Murder Rates Year 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 Murder Rate in Death Penalty States* 9.94 9.51 9.69 9.23 8.59 7.72 7.09 6.51 5.86 5.70 5.82 5.82 5.91 5.71 5.87 5.90 5.83 5.72 5.26 5.00 4.89 4.95 4.72 Murder Rate inNon-death Penalty States 9.27 8.63 8.81 7.88 6.78 5.37 5.00 4.61 4.59 4.25 4.25 4.27 4.10 4.02 4.03 4.22 4.10 4.05 3.90 4.01 4.13 4.09 3.88 PercentDifference 7% 10% 10% 17% 27% 44% 42% 41% 28% 35% 37% 36% 44% 42% 46% 40% 42% 41% 35% 25% 18% 21% 22% As you can see, the states which prohibit the death penalty have lower crime rates then those who do. "Indeed, 10 of the 12 states without capital punishment have homicide rates below the national average, Federal Bureau of Investigation data shows, while half the states with the death penalty have homicide rates above the national average. In a state-by- state analysis, The Times found that during the last 20 years, the homicide rate in states with the death penalty has been 48 percent to 101 percent higher than in states without the death penalty."-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Rebuttal for economically benefitial: That is simply false - "Cases without the death penalty cost $740,000, while cases where the death penalty is sought cost $1.26 million. Maintaining each death row prisoner costs taxpayers $90,000 more per year than a prisoner in general population." Also, "Cases receiving a death notice are approximately $517,000 more costly during the trial phase, $147,000 more costly during the penalty phase, and $201,000 more costly during the appellate phase than a capital eligible case where no death notice was filed…. On average, a death notice adds about $1,000,000 in costs over the duration of a case."-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Rebuttal for Bible: Jesus taught believers to forgive: "But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses." Mat. 6:15 the New Testament teaches Christians not to judge: "Judge not, that you be not judged." Mat. 7:1 Paul taught believers to: Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse... Repay no one evil for evil... do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath; for it is written, "Vengeance is Mine, I Will repay," says the Lord."Rom. 12:14, 17, 19 Jesus also stated: thou shall not kill. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Rebuttal for justice: But that is hypocritical. We are killing people for... killing people! We are going against ourselves completely. We are saying to people: you cannot kill people or we will kill you (you cannot do it but we can). Dosent that give the government WAY more authority over human life then they should have? We can balance justice in other ways - life imprisonment is a MUCH harsher sentencing then being killed. In fact, more justice would be brought upon our citizens if we abolished the death penalty because, all criminals who would be killed before, would be rotting in their cells every day with no escape, thinking about what they did. "More death-row inmates have been volunteering for their executions: Between 1993 and 2002, 75 volunteered for death, compared to the 22 consensual executions between 1977 and 1992. (Gary Gilmore, the first prisoner put to death after the Supreme Court reinstituted capital punishment in 1976, "volunteered" for his execution in 1977 because he did not want to live the rest of his life on death row.)"-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Rebuttal for better enviroment: Actually, it increases murder in prisons.Death Penalty Retentionist States vs. Abolitionist States (data from Bureau of Justice Statistics):• Between 2001 and 2007, states with the death penalty had considerably higher prison murder rates on average (4.25/100,000, with four of 38 states reporting no prison homicides in that time period) than those states without the death penalty (.92/100,000, with 7 of 12 states reporting no prison homicides).-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Rebuttal for overpopulation: Prison overpopulation is currently not an issue since not a lot of people are currently in prison. Think about it (1.8/314 million people are in prison) That is less than one percent of the population. So currently, we do not need to worry about overcrowding because every prisoner currently has a cell - and prisons currently are not struggling finding cells for prisoners. So why make this a concern when it is not? The government can always just build more prisons - why should we have to MURDER people instead of actually doing some work to build prisons and cells (even though they are not needed at the moment) they can save lives in the long run.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------I also wanted to point out how imprisonating people instead of killing them stops them from doing crimes in the near future.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Sources:http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org...;http://kgov.com...;http://www.theologyonline.com...;http://abcnews.go.com...;https://death.rdsecure.org...;http://listverse.com...http://www.commondreams.org...http://www.antideathpenalty.org...http://www.nodeathpenalty.org...