The death penalty should be abolished in the United States of America

RebutallsContention 1: Cost According to the studies provided by Con, he demostrates that most DP cases cost more than LWP cases. However, these stats provided do not take in factor of Plea Bargaining. What exactly is Plea bargaining? It is an arrangement between a prosecutor and a defendant whereby the defendant pleads guilty to a lesser charge in the expectation of leniency. Most often that not, plea bargaining is used to to avoid the cost of the DP by substancial amounts, and will result in a cheaper case. The costs for LWP are usually over exxgarated, as the amount of time a prisoner serves and what type of prison it essentially is playing into factor. These costs provided by Con which are $44, 563, do not represent the costs of all DP cases across the country. Also, these estimates, do not take Plea Barganing into factor. Con makes a mistake here. He mentions., "44,563*50 = 2,228,150. So this is 2.2 million" So basically, this is the cost of keeping a prisoner in jail, "after" he has been sentenced. If you take the cost of the LWP case in the first place, you would see that the cost is actually 2.2million+ 2.01 million (cost of the LWP case) So, using the statistics provided by Con, you can see the costs are actually higher, when we take the costs of the LWP case, and the actual cost of keeping the criminal in jail itself. Then again, it isn't an accurate measure this, because rates vary across states. Some states might be more expensive than others, and like I mentioned again, this study doesn't support Plea Bargaining like I mentioned.Also, the cost of the DP varies among the juristrictions of different states. In some cases, it has been shown that the cost of the DP was pretty much the same as the LWP case. This trend was discovered by Sorenson and Rocky Leann Pilgrim published evidence that found that the cost of an LWOP case in Texas and a DP were the same. Another factor that must be taken into factor is the dettering factor. According to Mr.Lott, who wrote a book on the effects of the DP, he estimated, that after calculating all other variables, the DP actually prevented 12% to 14% of crime that could have occured in the 90's, when the crime rate was quite high. In this case, the DP actually prevented murders from occuring in the first place. If you go back to my first source from Ms. Shepard, she figured that one execution was roughly equalivlent to preventing a total of 3 murders.Contention 2: ErrorsCon's first statement " Some of these people have been held on death row since the 80's. This here, proves that the justice system is capable of making mistakes, and is not foolproof." Is not quite right. Inmates who have been placed in death row, are simply waiting for their execution, and have a chance to be released if they are innocent. LWP which contains the words "without parole" are not going to be looked at, if you by chance the criminal is innocent, hence is why there is no parole. Atleast with the DP, innocents have a chance to prove themselves, and 67% of the time, Death rows inmates have been released. So, which sentence seems more fair? LWOP sentences receive no special consideration on appeal, which limits the possibility they will be reduced or reversed. A person sentenced to die in prison receives only one automatic appeal, not several, and is not provided any court-appointed attorneys after this appeal is complete, usually within two years of the initial sentence.Regarding the amount of wrongful executions, Con must prove that those wrongful executions , outweigh the number of innocent lived from these executions, because the BOP is on him. Let me address the wrongful executions. In this case, it actually does make sense that the DP has a high rate of exonerations, because it means that those who have been wrongfully been convicted, can be free. LWP victims are literally stuck in jail until they die. Lets do some quick math, and using Con's own statistics, I show what that % looks like. 6/1,412= 0.004% of prisoners have been wrongfully executed, and Con himself says that only 9 of them have been confirmed. Since, the DP has saved numerous amount of lives (referring to the 28% I mentioned earlier) I see no reason to abolish it. With newer technology, DNA testing, and a panel of juries, the error rate will only lower, and clearly the # of lives saved outweighs the 0.004% of wrongful executions. Contention 3 – Ineffective at Reducing Crime Con makes an interesting correlation between 2 states. Vermont and Texas. He seems to think that Vermont's low crime is because they abolished the death penalty. I really do not see how this correlation makes sense. According to Con, he says that Vermont abolished the death penalty in 1965. So, lets look at Vermont's crime rate prior to 1965. From 1960 to 1965, There were 1,6,1,2,2,2 murders, in that particular order. Now, right after the abolishment, you can see the rise in murder rates. Numbers that were once in single digits, are now in double digits. I'm not trying to argue that this was because of the abolishment of the DP, but rather different variabes went into play. I learned this from my friend Hitchslap "Correlation doesn't equal Causation". Now, when you compare Vermont's crime rate from 1960, to Texas's from 1960, you can already see that Vermont was already safer prior to the abolishment. So, it doesn't nesscarily mean that Texas didn't reduce crime from the DP. All those states that Con mentioned already had higher crime rates than what Vermont had. Like I mentioned before in my opening arguments, states with with Capital punishment actually witnessed a larger drop in crime, compared to those with non-capital punishment. This was in the late 90's when the crime rates were beggining to drop nationwide. Con brings another non-related variable into play. He argues that the U.S.A has the highest homicide rates among developed nations, so this alone would mean that the DP is the reason for this. No proof as been provided by Con, that the DP is responsible, for not deterring crime, as other factors go into play. It is also interesting that Con brings up "developed nations" because why would being developed matter if the only variable was the DP? If the DP variable was accurate, he could have brought up a country like Haiti, because they outlawed the DP, yet their homicide rate is double of what the U.S experiences.