The US should abolish capital punishment

PrefaceThis is the Round 2 debate for the Official DDO Winter Regular Tournament, graciously and selflessly hosted by the breathtakingly beautiful and sensual; TheProphett. My opponent is tejretics, someone I respect greatly, and after the long Winter break that I spent eating gingerbread cookies, watching the Michael Jackson films that my grandmother insisted that I watch, helping my grandpa learn how to use his computer, and go on long and glorious nature walks for hours throughout the roaming forests of the great state of Oregon, I am ready to debate. We will be debating the issue of the death penalty in the United States. My job, as Pro, is to convince the judges, and anybody else reading this that the United States should abolish the capital punishment. My reasons for why this is true will be my case, and I look forward to discussing this with Tej. This debate will be on the current death penalty, meaning that I will be arguing that the death penalty, as it exists now should be abolished. Not as it will exist ten or twenty years from now, only the current system. I accept the opt-in voting standards and all definitions. I will not go overboard with my case, I know what it's like to vote on a long debate, I will try to spare the judges of this as much as possible. C1) The Right to LifeThe purpose of a government is to protect its citizens’ rights. This is especially true for the United States as it was founded solely on this principle, outlined in our Declaration of Independence. It reads,“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…”This text tells us two things:1) That Life, Liberty, and pursuit of Happiness are unalienable rights, meaning they cannot be taken away from the citizens. 2) The purpose of a government’s existence is to secure these unalienable rights, and it is therefore their duty to make sure these rights are secured. This is further demonstrated by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), a document created by the United Nations General Assembly. It is an outline for the common standard of achievements for all people and nations [1]. This means that the articles contained therein are principles that every nation should strive to follow. In Article 3, it states, "Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person."If the United States wants to be a successful nation, they should follow the principles in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a document they supported by signing. Capital Punishment violates the right to life. This is a fact that is irrefutable. As long as the criminal that is being executed is a citizen of the United States, the United States has an obligation to protect their rights, regardless of crimes they committed (hence “unalienable”). The United States should abolish the death penalty because it is their duty (the purpose of their existence) to do so, as well as a means to become a successful nation (UDHR).C2) CostPeople will commit crimes, some of the crimes will be very severe and therefore will require the most severe of punishments. In Con’s world this would be the death penalty, in my world it would be life imprisonment. Here I will show that life imprisonment would cost less than a death penalty, and therefore abolishing the death penalty will be a net economic benefit. Seattle University studied the costs of the death penalty and found that each death penalty case in Washington cost $1 million more than than cases where death penalty was not sought [2]. The average cost of defending a trial in a federal death case is $620,932, about 8 times that of a federal murder case in which the death penalty is not sought [3]. Judge Arthur Alarcon and Professor Paula Mitchell calculated that if California commuted all those remaining on death row to life without parole, it would result in an immediate savings of 170 million per year, with a savings of 5 billion over the next 20 years. Considering that California has a debt of 778 billion dollars [4], abolishing the death penalty could help significantly. The study estimates that the average cost to Maryland taxpayers for reaching a single death sentence is $3 million - $1.9 million more than the cost of a non-death penalty case. (This includes investigation, trial, appeals, and incarceration costs.) The study examined 162 capital cases that were prosecuted between 1978 and 1999 and found that those cases will cost $186 million more than what those cases would have cost had the death penalty not existed as a punishment. At every phase of a case, according to the study, capital murder cases cost more than non-capital murder cases [5].As empirical evidence shows, the death penalty is significantly more costly than life imprisonment. C3) PrejudiceThe death penalty unfairly targets and discriminates based on ethnicity. In Louisiana, the odds of a death sentence were 97% higher for those whose victim was white than for those whose victim was black [6].In Oklahoma and Missouri, black Americans are overrepresented on death row by nearly a factor of four [7]. The death penalty is a broken system, it punishes not based on the crime, but on your ethnicity, your wealth, and the quality of your lawyer. “Nationally, during the 23-year study period, the overall rate of prejudicial error in the American capital punishment system was 68%. In other words, courts found serious, reversible error in nearly 7 of every 10 of the thousands of capital sentences that were fully reviewed during the period.” [8]“26 Death Row inmates…have received a new trial or sentencing because their attorneys' incompetence rendered the verdict or sentence unfair, court records show…33 defendants sentenced to death were represented at trial by an attorney who had been, or was later, disbarred or suspended--disciplinary sanctions reserved for conduct so incompetent, unethical or even criminal that the state believes an attorney's license should be taken away.” [9]Criminals are not sentenced by the heinous of their crime, but rather by the quality of their representation. "Poor people are also far more likely to be death sentenced than those who can afford the high costs of private investigators, psychiatrists, and expert criminal lawyers." [10]This demonstrates more than everything that the death penalty is a broken system, and it would be unethical to continue it. C4) InnocentsSince we can never know with 100% certainty whether someone is actually guilty, mistakes are bound to happen. This is an inevitable fact, and a discomforting one. But when the punishment is an irreversible such as death, mistakes are irreversible. “You can release an innocent man from prison, but you can’t release him from the grave.” -Freddie Lee Pitts, a man exonerated from death row for a crime he did not commit. Between 1973 and 2015, 148 innocent citizens were exonerated and released from death-row [11]. 4.1% of those executed are innocent [12].The fact that there is a possibility at all that an innocent person could be executed is reason enough to abolish the death penalty as a faulty system.[1] http://www.un.org...[2] http://www.seattletimes.com...[3] http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org...\[4] http://www.statebudgetsolutions.org...[5] http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org...[6] http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org...[7] http://www.theatlantic.com...[8] http://www2.law.columbia.edu...[9] http://www.chicagotribune.com...[10] https://www.aclu.org...[11] https://www.aclu.org...[12] http://www.theguardian.com...