The US should abolish the death penalty

== Observation == Before starting my rebuttals, I’d like to observe one thing. Pro has the burden of proof. There are three reasons for this. The first is that the law *cannot* be changed without any reason--if there’s no valid justification for change of law, it isn’t changed. The Supreme Court established this in Mathews v Eldridge, where it showed that, with no good reasons to abolish a law, the law cannot be abolished and must be upheld, since it would make little sense to posit a law or abolition that is meaningless in practice [1]. The second reason for the observation is that Pro is the one making the affirmative statement, therefore carries the BoP. The final reason is that Pro is establishing a change to the status quo--the plan calls for *complete* abolition of the death penalty, while capital punishment exists in 31 states and at the federal level in the United States [2]. R1) Innocent death High exonerations allows for the prevention of innocent death. There are, as Pro observes, large amounts of DP exonerations, which *reduces* the possibility of innocent death. Current data suggests that the rightful conviction rate for the DP is actually 99.72% [3]. And this is excluding exonerations. The actual number of innocents executed would be very less. This is completely offset by the deterrent effect of capital punishment--the death penalty, on average, saves *more* innocent lives than it takes [4]. As such, the DP saves more lives, so this argument can be discredited under impact calculus. R2) Cost of the death penalty Turn this argument against Pro. Pro argues the DP has immensely high costs. In fact, the DP costs *less* than life imprisonment for one major reason--its deterrent effect. The cost of one murder to society is $17 million [5]. Each execution prevents--on balance--18 murders [4]. There were 35 executions in the US in 2014 [6], which means the DP saved $10.71 billion last year. This makes up for all the costs of the DP, and, in fact, saves enough money to make it *less* costly than life imprisonment. This is because the average cost of an execution in the US is $3 million [7], which means, last year, the total death penalty cost was $105 million. This means that the DP saved, subtracting from it its costs, $10.605 billion last year, which still saves *far* more money than life imprisonment. Costs of the death penalty differ between states. The median annual cost for maintaining a prisoner is ~$47,000 [8], which means, if a person spends 50 years in jail, then it would cost $2.35 million. In Washington, capital punishment costs $2.01 million, which is *less* than the cost of life imprisonment. As for Texas, Pro’s estimate is flawed--it comes from an opinion blog. Prefer the estimate of economists Jon Sorensen and Rocky LeAnn Pilgrim, who calculate that the cost of life without parole and an execution in Texas are the same [9]. Additionally, costs of the death penalty make up only small part of the state’s budget. My opponent’s estimate in Texas is 2.3 million dollars [11] for one execution, and, though such an estimate is likely false [9], I will take the biased estimate for this. There were 10 executions in Texas last year [12]. The Texas budget is 99 billion dollars [13][14]. This means that the DP is only 0.024% of the Texas budget at *maximum,* with the DP cost used here also dubious (see Sorenson and Pilgrim, p. 158). My opponent’s Kansas estimate is $1.26 million, and the Kansas budget is 15.4 billion dollars [13], which means the DP makes up 0.008% of the Kansas budget. Plea bargains significantly reduce the costs of capital punishment. According to economist Kent S. Scheidegger, “The average county with the death penalty disposes of 18.9% of murder cases with a plea and a long sentence, compared to 5.0% in counties without the death penalty.” [10] Plea bargains can sometimes even completely offset the cost of the death penalty, and (regardless of deterrence), generally reduce the cost of capital punishment to be 1.4-1.5 times as much as life imprisonment [1o]. Cost studies tend to underestimate the cost of the LWOP. They often fail to account for the fact that prisoners on LWOP stay in prison longer than prisoners on death row do. This also has to be taken into account. C1) Deterrence First, Pro questions an economic analysis of the death penalty’s deterrent effect. Large level of death penalty research is spearheaded by economists. This is because--essentially--economics is the ultimate social science. Much of the modern death penalty research requires an econometric background to understand the statistics. Pro’s argument that criminologists are better at analyzing criminal behavior is a bare assertion, since behavioral economics and rational economics are basically the studies of human behavior and rationality [15][16][17][18]. Onto the scientific consensus. The survey of criminologists is *not* a study based on empirical research--it is merely the opinion of criminologists. As economists spearhead much of death penalty research, prefer those with an economic background. A survey was conducted among economists on whether they believed that capital punishment deters crime. 100% of those surveyed said yes [19]. The consensus among economists is opposite to the criminological consensus, so only empirical research needs to be evaluated--since one consensus cancels out another. The empirical research Pro presents regards crime rates, rather than *drop* in those rates. There are multiple factors affecting crime rates. Crime rates are not a good empirical analysis of whether the death penalty deters crimes--instead, an analysis must be conducted as to whether the death penalty caused a significant *drop* in crime. There are 22 studies on whether the DP truly has a deterrent effect [20], of which seventeen show a deterrent effect, and two are inconclusive. As mentioned, one of the studies actually *shows* a deterrent effect, though it concludes the DP doesn’t drop crime--but it does reduce *homicide* rates [21]. The most reliable economic study, by Hashem Dezhbakhsh and Paul H. Rubin, concludes that the deterrent effect of capital punishment is huge--in fact, it concluded that each execution could deter 18 homicides [22]. There is a large consensus in the econometric literature, that actually uses empirical research and finds a direct correlation between crime drop and the death penalty. A few studies are sourced here [23][24][25][26][27][28]. State trends show a direct correlation between the introduction of the death penalty and crime drop, according to a study by economists Rafael Di Tella, Sebastian Edwards, and Ernesto Schargrodsky, who found that the death penalty in various states, including New York State, caused homicide drop, as seen in the below graph [29]. John R. Lott uses empirical research to prove that capital punishment was responsible for 12-14% of the crime drop in the 1990s [30]. Pro claims that some criminals not acting rationally disproves rational choice theory. There are a few problems with this. First, this is a hasty generalization--most data proves that the majority of criminals are rational actors, and can be deterred. Even juveniles and the mentally ill can act rationally [31][32], and be deterred. Secondly, Pro misrepresents what ‘rationality’ is--under rational choice theory, rationality is making a cost-benefit analysis with most actions. Thus, the DP deters crime. C2) Prevention of recidivism Pro argues a counterplan--that criminals have to be rehabilitated better. I find a few problems with this: (1) the counterplan is vague, since Pro fails to establish *how* the system has to be reformed, or exactly *how* the counterplan will be implemented, and (2) Pro fails to show any empirical research that shows that all criminals can be rehabilitated, or that recidivism rates will decrease successfully. With these missing impacts and links, you can still presume Con under this contention. C3) DP is just Pro drops much of my points. Pro drops that retribution is an essential part of punishment, or that punishment has to be proportional. Pro drops that the DP is just in, at least, *some* cases. Pro drops all the sources I presented based on the justice of retribution. Presume Con right there. Next, Pro commits a correlation-implies-causation fallacy [33], as a correlation between execution of blacks =/= causation. Finally, the DP is also just from a utilitarian standpoint. Lives are saved due to the existence of capital punishment--the more lives saved, the more just. Thus, I negate. http://www.debate.org...