Intemediate's Debate Competition R2: The Death Penalty Should Be Legal.

I would like to say again that I am playing devil’s advocate; I believe there are always better alternatives to the death penalty in developed worlds. I will refer to the death penalty as DP, capital punishment as CP, and life sentence as LS, and life without parole as LWOP, for ease of typing. I only started this argument on Tuesday morning, so it’s going to be relatively brief. ========== I. CP restores an overall sense of justice. The system of justice is meant to deter criminals, restore society as is after the fact, and punish those who committed these crimes. Punishment is essential to a justice system, because without it, justice would be meaningless – people who commit crimes would merely be removed from society, without so much as a slap on the wrist. Imagine a child who stole candy; removing the child from the candy is only a temporary, short term solution, since he would only try again and again to get to the candy, and it would make access to candy more difficult for law abiding kids; inflicting a punishment such as a spanking will teach him to not steal again. Disregarding the opportunity costs, inflicting a permanent punishment is even more effective. The one thing that humans are hard wired to fear most is death [1]. That’s why the death penalty is often among the harshest punishments a society can inflict. In cases of murder, capital punishment makes even more sense, because in committing a crime, the criminal has voluntarily given up his own right to what he took away. We take money away from people who stole money, why not take life away from people to take lives? Fair contracts, including social ones, are based on a system of proportional retribution. While only 60% of U.S. citizens support the DP in theory [2], this number fluctuates as people are made aware of the type of crimes committed by the criminals who are eligible for the DP. 70% support the use of DP on the Boston Bombing suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev [3]. As a victim, legalizing the DP brings closure, the least a system of justice can give back to the victims. II. CP deters would-be criminals. People respond to incentives [4]. It’s a simple psychological law. If a rational person knew of the potential consequences of his actions, he would be much more likely to be influenced when making a decision. Death is, not “one of,” but THE single strongest personal negative incentive to most rational humans, therefore naturally it would also be the best deterrent. According to Naci Mocan, a professor at the University of Colorado at Denver, DP has a detering effect: “the conclusion is there is a deterrent effect.” [5] According to a study supported by Mocan, for every execution, about 3 to 18 homicides are deterred. Give that there were 1359 criminals executed in the past 38 years [6], that’s about 4000-24000 potentially saved. This may not seem like a big difference to the over 700 000 thousand homicides [7] in the same time frame, but it’s still a significant number. In addition, 1.2% of those who had served time for homicide were arrested again for homicide within 3 years [8]. This would never happen if the DP was inflicted. III. DP grants bargaining power to prosecuting attorneys. Over 90% of legal cases in the U.S. are done by plea deals [9]. Plea deals become worthless if the prosecutor has no leverage. Say if capital punishment was banned, then a persecutor will have to juggle LS with LWOP, instead of LWOP and the DP. Given the statistics for recidivism of at least 1.2% for murderers, this wouldn’t be a good deal. Given that people now know they will more likely live even if they committed crimes like rape, torture, and murder, they will have less of an incentive to not commit the crime. The DP makes criminals and their lawyers more likely to accept plea deals, therefore reducing the cost of potential trials without compromising the severity of the punishment. There is also no reason to not use the death penalty on people who have committed heinous crimes. A death penalty is like any other punishment, in that it has its punitive values. Banning a set of punishments for what it is is pointless, especially if it is effective. ========== [1] http://phobias.about.com... [2] http://www.gallup.com... [3] http://www.washingtonpost.com... [4] http://www.nber.org... [5] http://www.washingtonpost.com... [6] http://www.clarkprosecutor.org... [7] http://www.disastercenter.com... [8] http://www.bjs.gov... [9] http://en.wikipedia.org...