The death penalty should be abolished.

My caseI. LivesA. DeterrencePro claims that studies have shown the death penalty is not a deterrent. If they have, he hasn't cited them. Pro focuses all of his efforts attacking my study, which I admitted was problematic. Studies for the issue are going to be extremely difficult to conduct due to the multivariate issue and extremely small sample size. Pro does not respond to the logic nor to the citation of a murder actually admitted that while committing his murder he "knew [he] wouldn't go to the chair". We have to go with the logic that people follow their incentives. I'm sure Pro would agree that if we lowered the sentence for murder to a $1000 fine we would see more murder occur because having stronger penalties deters crimes. Pro argues that since states with the death penalty have higher murder rates, clearly this means LWOP deters more murder. This is incredibly flawed as death sentences, even in states with the death penalty, are exceedingly rare. The only real question is does the threat of death deter murderers? Pro hasn't made any logical argument for why it doesn't. Pro's source from the ACLU never claims that LWOP is a better deterrent to the death penalty, because it isn't. The threat hanging over you of having three meals a day, social interaction, and healthcare until you die is not the same as the threat of having your existence terminated which is the reason that practically everyone sentenced to die fights their sentence tooth and nail. Pro's third citation is an article from the Huffington Post who's title proclaims that studies say the death penalty is not a deterrent. This is Huffington Posts liberal bias seeping through, if you actually read the article it claims that the study found no reliable research either way. This is not at all the same as proving death is not a deterrent. Pro argues that the harm from executing murderers is taking away their constitutional right to life, a right never established by the Constitution--in fact the Constiution explictly references Capital Punishment in phrases such as "No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury...nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb" in amendment Five. The only real takeaway here is that we need to look at it logically: do people follow their incentives, or not? Decreasing the incentive to murder by having the threat of the ultimate penalty is obviously going to decrease some murders, which helps maximize the purpose of the justice system. The system should err on the side of caution--there's no harm in executing some of our worst human rights violaters but there is a harm in letting innocent people die. B. RecidivismMy opponent makes the claim that since my examples are old, these things don't happen anymore but that's just false. I cited those two because they're some of the worst offenders. A simple google search brings up an article published yesterday of a man who got only 8 years (!) for committing two murders and is now being charged with yet another murder[1]. Had he been executed, this likely wouldn't have happened. In the late 90s Westley Lowe compiled a short and incomplete list of murderers who were released, or escaped, or killed while in prison containing dozens of examples[2]. Britian, which has abolished the death penalty, has released murderers who killed again at least 31 people in the last decade[3]. Pro argues that without the death penalty we could spend the cash we save on increasing prison defenses, but unless he proves that abolishing the death penalty is going to do that he gains no advantage. II. JusticeThe Supreme Court has upheld the death penalty consistently since 1976. If it violated the 8th amendment, the Supreme Court would have ruled so. Pro gives no warrants on why it's "cruel" to gently kill a convicted murderer. Prefer my analysis of the proportionality of punishment and the Mills quote about how we show reverence to life by applying the ultimate penalty to those who violate it. Pro cites a the UN Declaration of Human Rights but note that what the UN says is not objective, you should prefer the work of actual philosophers to their bold declarations. Moreover when the Declaration was signed in 1948 the vast majority of nations still had Capital Punishment because rights are not absolute. We all have the right to life, but we can lose that right if we violate the social contract in egregious ways like killing another. Pro doesn't dispute my analysis on punishments having to match the crime, so you can vote Con.The resolution is negated as capital punishment gives the state a tool to fulfill it's obligations to the justice system. Opponents caseCostPro doesn't dispute that you can't put a price on justice, he just tries to argue that we can't execute murderers because we are taking a human life. The problem is, as I've already said rights are not absolute. I could argue that imprisonment violates ones right to liberty just as easily, I was clearly referencing innocent life in my argument. Pro argues that we are putting a price on life by having active military, but this doesn't make much sense. Having a defense force is not the same as saying "We know the death penalty deters murder, but we are not going to use it because we spend too much on it". Pro argues again that we could spend the money we save on crime control, but there's no proof that affirming the resolution is going to lead to the state doing that. It's better to negate and for sure save some lives instead of affirm and hope the state uses the equivalent of a drop in the bucket to finance life saving ventures.Pro continues to argue against the one study I cited instead of the logic of my argument. Obviously the death penalty is going to deter some murders and prevent some by disallowing criminals the ability to kill again. Pro argues that I'm somehow assuming Life Without Parole deters no murders, but obviously I'm not. My argument is that the death penalty is more of a threat and thus deters *more* murders because people follow their incentives. Pro's article has no source on the cost of trials but it's safe to assume they're vastly more the $3000 dollars. Trial costs for automobile *civil suits* are well over 5 times that[4]. Moreover remember the Iowa State study--if an execution deters 1/34th of a murder that LWOP wouldn't, we still come out on top economically.On Plea bargaining the source says on page 12 that in counties where death is an option, murderers plead guilty significantly more often (53.9% to 42,6%) forgoing the cost of a trial entirely. DeterrenceMy opponent insists on comparing countries across each other as if a rarely applied single facet of the justice system explains all variance. You need to prefer me on this because I'm the only one arguing logically--to affirm is to throw all logic out the window. To see why the death penalty almost certainly does deter, see my deterrence argument above. Pro argues that since electrocution is now rarely applied the threat of death is no longer scary to inmates but we know this isn't true. If LWOP was a worse sentence than death virtually everyone in that situation would commit suicide, but relatively few do. InnocencePro drops my analysis on how this proves the appeals system works. Pro also doesn't dispute my analysis that these overturned convictions are becoming extremely rare and one hasn't happened in over a decade. This actually serves as an argument against LWOP---if we wrongly convict this many death row inmates, where jurors apply a much stricter standard for conviction and where innocence watch dog groups actually pay attention--how many lifers are wrongly convicted, left to die behind bars? The numbers suggest a lot. The National Registry of Exonerations reports that since 1989 there have been 1339 exonerations[5]. About 500 of these were from life sentences of some kind. NTY says that in 2009 there were 140,000 people serving life sentences, most of which would've been for murder. Analysis of this data shows that *far fewer* people sentenced to life in prison are freed (500/140,000, ~0.35%) compared to those those freed from death sentences (about 100 sinces 1989/3095 current inmates[6] is around 3%) despite *vastly lower* sentencing standards. Thus, since life imprisonment seems less urgent and inmates don't have automatic appeals like death row inmates do, far fewer innocents get freed. It looks like life imprisonment actually protects the innocent less than death does. Sources:1. http://www.baltimoresun.com...2. http://www.wesleylowe.com...3. http://www.telegraph.co.uk...4. http://www.courtstatistics.org...5. http://www.law.umich.edu...6. http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org...