In the United States, Plea Bargaining in Exchange for Testimony is Unjust.

ahahahahahaha, Mr. Gowolves777, you are too funny. Forgive my brief ad hominem attacks, I know they're base and low-class, but you're the kind of debater I used to face back in novice, the guy who thought that since he knew the theory he knew how to debate. Address my arguments, please. In my rebuttal I hope to show how the affirmative position is trying to blind the judges with semantic and pointless trivialities that sound astute but are, in fact, non-topical pieces of fluff. Furthermore, I will show how his rebuttal, while seemingly sharp and technical, is in fact lazy. I'll just go down my opponent's case point by point. Wolves argues that no criterion is required, that his value is very weighable in the round. This is, of course, a spurious claim: the value criterion exists so that we have a brightline to determine when the value is reached. Procedural Justice is a fine value, but how do we know when we've acheived it? We need a criterion, like the protection of rights, that demonstrates that when rights are protected, Procedural Justice is upheld. Even if we accept his argument that no value criterion is required, let's look at his case. My opponent states that I dropped his first two points of topical analysis, and I accept that. He then tries to explain why they are significant, and it is with this that I have issue. To quote my opponent: "My first point under the standard is that the resolution asks if something is unjust and the only type of Justice that can be used for this resolution is Procedural Justice because it asks if a court procedure is just. This argument is important because for a court procedure to be just we must strive for procedural justice." This is circular reasoning, baseless and semantic logic that does nothing to further either case. He then continues to point out why his second point of topical analysis is significant: "My second point under the standard is saying that since the resolution is contextualized in the United States, we have to use a type of justice relevant to the U.S. Court systems don't have time to evaluate case by case so a procedure must be used. This argument is important because it is showing that since we are talking about the United States we must have a value beneficial to the United States." Again, semantic fluff. I accept that this debate is centered in the United States, I made no point to contest this. He tries to point out its significance: don't buy it. My opponent attacks my kritik by alleging that it's a blunt assumption. Just to recap, my kritik is that plea bargaining is a tool used by prosecutors to convict criminals, and as such, in the same way that we don't judge the hammer to be just or unjust if it's used wrongly, we shouldn't judge plea bargaining in this manner. My opponent claims that you shouldn't let me get away with it, but then doesn't explain why. He then points out that it's a clear contradiction to the rest of my case. Perhaps he doesn't understand that it's just an overview, a point that it's his job to address, removed from the rest of my case but still part of the negative position. I'd just like to point out that in his rebuttal of my two contentions, Wolves claims that the arguments are based on the evidence I give, and this is not true. The arguments, which are that the judicial system would collapse without plea bargaining and then also that the alternative to plea bargaining, the trial, does not always promote justice, stand on their own and I provide long justifications to the claims. Gowolves is trying to lead you astray, don't fall for it. Gowolves responds to my first contention by claiming that it's non-topical because my evidence supposedly relates to plea bargaining in general while the resolution is in fact about plea bargaining in exchange for testimony. However, I'd just like to point out that if I plead guilty, I am waiving my Fifth Amendment right to not testify against my self. To put it more clearly, guilty pleas are in essence testimonies. All plea bargaining involves testimony, be it against another individual or concerning ones self. After all, my opponent defines testimony as "a solemn declaration usually made orally by a witness under oath in response to interrogation by a lawyer or authorized public official," and guilty pleas are always made formally, in court, under oath, through questions given by the judge. Not only that, but judges don't just accept guilty pleas without evidence that it's a valid plea. Questions are asked and the individual is interrogated. In the past pleas, of guilt have been rejected because of faulty testimony. Furthermore, his response is a mere three sentences, with no analysis of the argument, just a cursory claim of non-topicality. Don't let him get away with the lazy accusations without warranting any of his statements. Wolves responds to my second contention by saying again that it is non-topical. And again he provides no evidence, no warrants, just the singular statement that we're supposed to take at face value. And like I said, all plea bargains entail a certain amount of testimony, be it against another individual or against ones self. My opponent does not respond in any way to my argument that trials do not necessarily uphold justice. Often, innocent individuals find the evidence stacked against them; they face a certain conviction of guilt if they go to trial. For these individuals, the plea bargain is a necessary option that would protect them from drastically unjust punishment. Furthermore, my opponent does not address my argument that for the Sixth Amendment right to trial to even BE a right, individuals must have the choice to waive it. Imagine if instead of given the CHOICE to bear arms, we were FORCED to bear arms. It would stop being a right, and instead become a mandate. In order to ensure the proper procedure of justice, which is my opponent's value, we must protect the Sixth Amendment right to trial by keeping it from becoming a mandate. The fact that my opponent fails to address this is significant for those reasons. I will now move to my opponent's defense of his case. Before I even go point-by-point, I'd like to address something significant: he claims that my rebuttals that did not fit into the space allotted should be disregarded, because they exceeded the word limit. He presents an outrageous example that he could "write a book" as a response to an argument and so therefore it's unfair to exceed the limit. This is not true for several reasons: 1) 8000 characters is not enough for the negative to both present a case and also respond to the affirmative's case. The average affirmative case is about 10000 characters. The average negative is about 6000. If we are to truly do this in LD format, we should adjust the character limits to reflect the length of both the cases and also of the rebuttals. The 1NC is a notoriously long speech, and it is preceded by 3 minutes of cross-ex and it ends with 3-minutes of cross-ex. In the interest of making this as true to LD format as possible, I made a rebuttal that would reflect the long response. 2) Other debaters go over the word limit often; it has become a widely accepted action here on debate.org. I wrote my responses based on the precedence set by other debaters. 3) My opponent is discounting my rebuttals simply because he has no response to them. This is something that we should not let him get away with. If he truly had responses he would just put them in the comments, too. The only rebuttal that I was able to fit in the 8000 letter response was an argument against his first contention, which said that plea bargaining is liable for abuse. My argument was that there already exist many checks against this, and I offered several examples of instances where plea bargains were rejected because they were found to be coerced or faked. Crap, out of room, I'll finish as a comment.