The United States should have a death penalty.

Con has the burden to prove that capital punishment should be abolished, a significant change from the status quo. Justice requires a death penalty I claimed directly that the purpose of the justice system is provide justice, and Con did not disagree. I asserted that there were two self-evident examples of crimes so heinous as to deserve the death penalty. There is no scientific method of that determines the punishment for robbing a bank or any other crime. It depends upon a concept of justice. Con's refutation must begin by saying that he thinks it unjust to kill a person who tortures a child to death. He argued that justice was too expensive and too risky, but not that the punishment was unjust. I did not cite Kant as an authority, I gave Kant's argument, which is that the level of punishment is determined by equity with the crime, and that it is immoral for a society to fail to uphold justice. That's a common concept, and it is appropriate for me to attribute the argument to it's source. I also argued that the death penalty brought closure to the victims, and that plea bargaining could close many unsolved murders. I pointed out that plea bargaining under the death penalty could bring disclosure of criminal associates or higher-ups, further enhancing justice overall. The resolution is about what “should” be done. For example, we can affirm, “People should live in peace.” That's a trivial affirmation that states a goal as being one that should be affirmed. It isn't negated by the practical difficulty of achieving the goal. If the Constitution prohibits something that it should allow, then the Constitution should be modified. There is nothing unconstitutional about impeaching a judge for failing to uphold the law, because the judge's oath is to uphold the law. The way to prove a judge is not upholding the law is when he makes a point of saying so, as anti-capital-punishment judges have done. Con never argued that the judges were upholding the law, he argued that nothing could be done about it. Impeachment is extreme; I also argued tightening the wording of the judicial oath, appointing judges with a better commitment to upholding the law, and revising procedures to ensure better enforcement. These are practical methods. If countries want to keep serial killers and terrorists safe in their countries despite guarantees from the the US they won't be executed then fine, they can bear the cost of keeping them. If they free terrorists, obviously they were never going to turn them over. Con's claims that the death penalty is given twice as often to blacks for “the same crime” as whites. Con cites a bogus link. No two crimes are “the same.” It's up to juries to make the determination, and because most of the capital crimes are in urban areas, black people will be serving on most of the juries that make the determination. Most of the overturned convictions cited by Con were a product of inadequate counsel assigned at the original trial. That problem is solved by shifting the cost to the state. The so-called “CSI effect” has caused juries to be more skeptical of prosecution evidence. None of the claimed false executions was for a conviction after 1992. There is no law that DNA evidence must be present, but juries are nonetheless much more demanding of solid evidence. Beyond that, there is a higher level of legal safeguards ensured by automatic appeals. Con cites opinions that as many as 0.5% of prisoners are falsely convicted, but that's for all crimes, not for death penalty cases where all the extra steps are provided. Without the death penalty, a killer serving LWOP kept in prison for an average of 50 years. The chances that he will kill a fellow inmates or a guard during those 50 years are small, but nonetheless serial killers keep that tendency, and there are dozens of such instances. There are many wrongful deaths due to the state keeping a killer who should have been executed alive and in good health. Abolishing the death penalty does not evade responsibility for wrongful deaths. The death penalty cuts long term costs The extra cost of having a death penalty is computed according to death penalty cost = cost of a capital trial and appeals + extra incarceration cost during trial – cost of a non-capital trial and appeals – savings due to plea bargaining – savings due to shorter incarceration Using the Federal average cost of incarceration; the average age of convicted murders and current average time to sentencing; life expectancy tables; Con's numbers for trial, appeals and plea-bargaining derived from Georgia; and using Con's claim that the yearly cost of incarceration before trial is double the yearly cost of life imprisonment, the calculation is: death penalty cost = $2.0 million + 15 * $29K – 0.2 *$2 million – 35 * $29K= $1050K Trial costs will always be more because of extra scrutiny, but states without local obstruction show the extra trial costs can be reduced to $1 million. Virginia has demonstrated an average time from conviction to execution of six years with all the present safeguards. The data from a study of urban areas across the county indicates that plea bargaining can offset the extra prosecution costs if a capital case costs less than 2.4 times a non-capital case, and in two states the ratio is about 1.6. Finally, it's unreasonable to suppose that the cost of incarceration will not rise over a period of fifty years. Using a modest assumption, total costs more than double. The cost is then $1 million + 6*$29K – (2.4 /1.6)*$1 million – 44*$29K*2 = - $2.9 million That's a savings of $2.9 million, with most of the savings in the long term incarceration costs of the killer. Note that in none of articles on the cost of the death penalty cited by Con are the long term incarceration costs even acknowledged as costs, and the plea bargaining savings are rarely acknowledged. Opponents cite only the higher trial costs and ignore the savings. Con claims that $16 million in death death penalty appeals caused New Jersey to layoff 500 police. His source is not an original news story, but merely someone repeating the legend. The $16 million was the total cost of the death penalty prosecutions, and $16 million in cuts were made to law enforcement the next year, 1992. [19. http://tinyurl.com...] The New Jersey budget message for the year [20. http://tinyurl.com...] reveals that budget for New Jersey was over $12 billion. Law enforcement cuts were 0.12% of the budget. The idea that New Jersey or any state was driven to the verge of bankruptcy by death penalty costs is absurd. In the $12B budget the state provided about $550 million in extra funding to localities so local real estate taxes could be cut. There were $265 million in state expenditures cuts based on audit committee recommendations for waste reduction. The Governor pledged that “everyone in government would share the sacrifice,” including law enforcement. Shifting the costs of prosecuting capital crimes to the state solves the problem of localities being bankrupted by a single expensive case, and it ensures that the defendant can always be given top-quality counsel from the outset. The Debate The confusing issues in a death penalty debate mainly arise from death penalty opponents using political activism to foil death penalty laws in some states, like California, and then claiming the bizarre results they brought about are typical. The problems do not exist in states that do not obstruct the laws. Opponents calculate costs ignoring all but trial costs. Opponents never speak of carrying out just punishment. In this debate, my opponent added additional complications by repeatedly misstating my position, proclaiming he addressed my "only argument" when I had made others. Justice requires a death penalty for the most heinous crimes. The upfront costs are trivial in a state budget, and in the long term cost savings accrue.