The death penalty should be accepted under curtain circumstances

I am glad to welcome my partner back to this discussion. I will now present my formal argument, and offer a rebuttal: “Innocent persons should not be executed, and the safeguards that are intended to prevent the execution of innocent persons are inadequate. Therefore, the death penalty cannot be considered a safe method by which we should allow our government to kill us.” I defend this argument axiomatically, granted, but I do not anticipate that my partner will challenge me on any of these propositions, excepting the “inadequate safeguards” clause. Essentially, my argument depends on the premise that we should strictly control the methods and circumstances by which we allow our government to kill its citizens. If this is found to be persuasive, then it must follow that the safeguards that prevent you and I from being killed by the state must be trustworthy. In my view, I would not be eager to trust my life to the current system. Therefore, I cannot credibly pronounce it trustworthy. I will point out a few examples of it failing to adequately protect the law abiding public from falling victim to the death penalty system in the rebuttal section. -------Rebuttals 1. The death penalty process makes it hard for an innocent person to be put to death With today's modern technology like DNA test and such it is hard to accuse an innocent person and even if the DNA test was wrong or misdirected. The process to convict someone to death is complex to the point were the state has to be 100% sure that they committed the crime. This argument was based on three main premises: 1. There are safeguards such as DNA testing, and requirements that jurists are “100% certain” of the guilt of the offender. 2. (Implied) These are always used, and are always effective. However, this is demonstrably false: Although few juries are intentionally homicidal, many are quite retributive and vindictive. Here are a few examples of wrongful convictions, taken from the Amnesty International website: Roy Krone spent 10 years in an Arizona prison for a murder that he did not commit. He was released from death row in 2002, becoming the 100the person to be released since 1973. Although DNA testing eventually proved his innocence, it was not available to him in time to prevent significant emotional trauma. Madison Hobley, Aaron Patterson, Stanley Howard and LeRoy Orange, were pardoned in 2003 after it was learned that their convictions were based on confessions extracted through the use of torture. Former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge and two other officers had used, besides torture, false data to secure the convictions. DNA evidence was not used. Jonathan Hoffman was sentenced to death for the murder of a store owner – based on the testimony of his cousin, who lied under oath to “get even” with the defendant for stealing money from him. Hoffman was exonerated in 2007. These are examples only, and may not be representative. However, they are real examples of real men who would have died but forprofoundly fortunate luck. We cannot rely on any system managed by fallible humans, to never make any mistakes under any circumstances. Yet that is precisely what we ask the death penalty to do: never make an error. Some common mistakes that occur in the implementation of the death penalty are 1. Police and prosecutor misconduct 2. Inadequate legal representation 3. Racial prejudice 4. Suppression of mitigating evidence 5. Community pressure to solve a case 2. It's hard to rehabilitate a serious offender This argument was based on two premises: 1. Serial murderers are obvious 2. Life imprisonment is no guarantee that an offender will never be released I cannot argue against these propositions, I suppose. However it has little bearing on my argument, since I am essentially making the case that “innocent persons should not be executed, and the safeguards that are intended to prevent the execution of innocent persons are inadequate. Therefore, the death penalty cannot be considered a safe method for by which we should allow our government to kill us.” Considering the thrust of my argument, I do not think I am well advised to allow myself to drift off-topic into a discussion as to whether or not serial killers or potential parolees should be killed. My concern is whether or not maintaining the death penalty is safe to operate – for law abiding citizens who must live nearby such asystem. I have shown examples of how it is not. Further, I am not convinced that it can ever be corrected and reformed to offer society the assurance that innocent persons will not suffer death or the loss of loved friends and family as a result of operating the death penalty. I maintain that the failure rate of the death penalty safeguards, if applied to a private company or even an entireindustry, would be unacceptable to the public. I argue that rage is the main motivator, the main “selling point” for the death penalty industry – but that this is inadequate to justify allowing it to continue to operate. “I was mad at a serial killer, so I killed your little brother, who did not do anything wrong, but I still want to keep killing serial killers, so I will continue accidentally killing little brothers in order to get revenge on serial killers” is simply not a valid argument.On the other hand, the same argument that suggests that it is unsafe for society to allow serial killers to be paroled due to the possibility that these offenders may kill an innocent person - is exactly my argument against the death penalty: it kills people who do not deserve to die. [1] http://www.amnestyusa.org...