Those Convicted of Serious Offences should be used for Medicine

I believe that my opponent has contradicted himself somewhat and effectively conceded the debate. His resolution and opening argument leave little room for doubt: "THOSE CONVICTED of the most serious offences, for example murder, have forfeited their human rights and deserve execution." Not 'in some cases' or as an 'optional alternative' but simply that anyone convicted of murder or other (still only vaguely defined) "serious offences" should be put to death. However in round 2, his position seems to have changed: "the option of the death penalty does not mean that all crimes of a certain category would warrant the death penalty." Some murders but not others? This would clearly be a different debate than the one instigated by my opponent and accepted by myself. I intend to continue arguing against the original resolution that was presented. __________ 1. Pro: "The basic right to freedom is negated when someone is assigned a custodial sentence." While this is true to a certain extent, 'freedom' and 'liberty' like 'rights' are difficult to pin down. I would argue that prisoners maintain certain freedoms in terms of opportunities to educate themselves, to work and to pursue certain leisure activities like sport or reading. Certainly their freedom is restricted in terms of their movement and accommodation but who except the mega-rich truly has the 'freedom' to travel or live wherever they want? Prisoners other human rights, most importantly the right to life and to personal security are still upheld. Abuse of prisoners shouldn't be and is not acceptable. --- 2. Pro: "Many offenders may have been rehabilitated, what is relevant is how many have been compared to how many have not." No, as the resolution advocates applying the death penalty to all murderers, rapists, terrorists and unspecified others, the fact that many offenders (however small a percentage) could instead be rehabilitated is entirely relevant. Within this point my opponent goes on to suggest it would indeed not be fair to execute the rape victim/murderer in my hypothetical example, thereby negating the resolution. --- 3. Pro: "It is obvious that simply hanging someone, wheeling them into an operating theatre, or handing them over as experimental material are cheaper alternatives than incarcerating someone in solitary confinement for decades. Not every country that employs the death penalty does so with such expensive inefficiency." This may be true but if we were to accept 'budget' execution trials then the risk of convicting innocents would be multiplied significantly. In response to the point of convicting innocents my opponent said: "the courts are fully aware of this issue the risk of which can be lowered with improved rigour with regards forensics and allowing the death penalty only in the most egregious of cases." These two arguments by my opponent seem to cancel each other out. Also within this point but regarding the issue of prison staff safety, my opponent says:"It is clearly superior to negate this admittedly low risk and replace it with zero risk." The only way to achieve this would be either to execute or physically cripple all prisoners, even those who have only committed minor offences, or alternatively to build fully automated prisons (ridiculously expensive and also well off topic). ---- 4. Pro:"so my opponent supports forced labour in medical research which is part of what I am arguing for?" Nice try but labour = work and is active by definition, unlike being experimented on which is entirely passive. The resolution clearly includes execution which I have definitely not expressed support for. --- 5. My opponent provides a link to an index of charities. He claims the fact that there are charities for animals but not rapists proves his assertion that people care more for rabbits than rapists. However a rabbit just one kind of animal and a rapist is just one (thankfully rare) kind of person. Looking at the list again, I see that there are far more human related charities than animal related ones. --- 6. Pro: "testing on humans provides superior experimental data [to testing on animals]" It is not worth compromising human rights in this way when sufficient information can be obtained from animal tests. Pro: "Would the thalidomide incident have occurred if medical companies could use prisoners for test subjects?" Presumably it would have still occurred but to a different group of people but how can we really be sure? 7. Pro: "A normal member of society has rights, though they may choose to be test subjects and be paid for it this subjects them to risk, I consider this to be amoral" If it is truly their choice and the risk is only to them, then preventing then from doing this is clearly a violation of their liberty. I don't think my opponent can base his arguments around human rights while criticising them and saying they should be violated. People are not inanimate objects, murderers are still human beings. Pro: "Murderers have committed a crime that warrants total disgust, they are not perfectly normal people." I don't know if this can be responded to constructively as we are dealing with emotions here and 'disgust' and 'normality' are clearly very subjective things. Personally while murder is indeed disgusting, some murders are far more disgusting to me than others. Some consider the murder of millions in warfare to be disgusting, others think abortion is murder and disgusting, so we can see it is extremely subjective. _______________ The risk of wrongful conviction. My opponent accepts that the execution of innocents is likely but believes the courts can ensure otherwise. As noted above this entirely contradicts his arguments about cost. Currently, although execution trials are already staggeringly more expensive than other trials, guidelines for ensuring guilt are still not being implemented to the recommended extent. This is pasted from the following source: http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org... The cost of the present system with reforms recommended by the Commission to ensure a fair process would be $232.7 million per year. The cost of a system in which the number of death-eligible crimes was significantly narrowed would be $130 million per year. The cost of a system which imposes a maximum penalty of lifetime incarceration instead of the death penalty would be $11.5 million per year.> There is not much middle ground here, either you have no problem with the execution of the innocent or the cost differences are huge. ---- Moral hypocrisy. Pro: "In some situations is it permissible to take life, in others it is not. There is no hypocrisy here." There is textbook hypocrisy, the state is saying: "killing is wrong, unless I do it." ---- My opponent has chosen to ignore my reference to the brutalisation effect, I don't know if this means he concedes it or not. ---- Remember: An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth leaves us all blind and gummy. Thanks. Con.