Death Penalty

I will first start out with the point my opponent has dropped then move on to the other points. 5. ) My opponent has dropped his fifth point. Therefore, you can flow through the argument that the government is using the death penalty as a means to protect society, and are merely following through on the Social Contract theory. By dropping this my argument extends through the debate, and my opponent cannot bring his fifth point up again. 2. ) My opponent continues on this point by saying that that 119 innocents have been released, and that 23 innocent people have been executed. However, my opponent is just lying by saying that 23 innocent people have been executed. Along with my Eddlem quote from earlier which says there have been no innocents executed, the Death Penalty Information Center (a source which my opponent frequently uses) agrees with me. My opponents source that he uses has examples where legal innocence has not been proven to be true. Therefore, these are merely conjectures of innocence made by the author of "In Spite of Innocence". The fact that no innocent has been executed disproves his quote that we cannot support a system where innocents have been killed, because this is not the case. But this is all immaterial anyways, because my opponent failed to address the point that we must look to the future. That most of these exonerations are from cases before DNA testing has been established, and that since DNA testing is in place now we can be assured of guilt as time goes on. My opponent dropped this point, which I made in my previous speech, so you can extend this argument through this round. 3)My opponent argues against my urban population example by bringing up the comparisons of New Mexico and Michigan. However, only two of the states that do not have the death penalty have large urban populations, these being New York and New Mexico. However, states with the death penalty that have large urban populations include California, Texas, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Arizona, ect. This shows that this comparison is grossly inconsistent and cannot be used. Again, my opponent originally stated his comparison was of crime rate, but now he says it was of homicide rates. This shows my opponent flip-flopping on what his example covers, therefore we should discount this example as well. Therefore, we should use a more exact and accurate comparison using homicide rates because that is what the death penalty is used on. However, my opponent completely dropped my previous study I cited. This study covered the number of executions and the homicide rate nationwide. Since my opponent did not address this and dropped the example, we must assume he agrees with it. Therefore, you must flow this study through, and this shows that the death penalty does in fact decrease the homicide rate and deter crime. This means that my opponents point three has now fallen. 4. )My opponent says that both choice leads to death. To this I agree, but I do not agree with the rest of my opponents point. He says that the pain of just spending time in jail with no luxuries is a better punishment. However, I completely disagree. As I have stated earlier, in prison the prisoner is still allowed human interaction and other activities. As well, some felons in prison join prison gangs. . http://en.wikipedia.org... These prison gangs intimidate and case harm to either other prisoners, and sometimes on the street. The leaders and the main members of the gangs are those who are murderers and are in prison for life. Therefore, since these people still cause damage in prison, we must use the death penalty on them to punish them for the crime they committed, and to prevent future damage through prison gangs. 1. ) Finally, moving back to my opponents first point. He agrees with me that there would be more investigations. This would be caused by the increase in murders by not having the death penalty. However, he says the cost of those would not eclipse the cost of one death penalty case. This is wrong. One of my opponents earlier statistics was that "In Tennessee, death penalty trials cost an average of 48% more than the average cost of trials in which prosecutors seek life imprisonment. " However, in . http://www.johansens.us... the graph shows that the homicide rate decreased by at least 15 homicides per million people from what I can tell. However, this would result in 15 more homicide investigations and let's say 10 trials with 5 unsolved murders. Since death penalty trials cost 48% more, we can see that these 10 additional trials caused by not having the death penalty cost more than that one death penalty trials. This also goes with my opponents statistic of "In Maryland death penalty cases cost 3 times more than non-death penalty cases, or $3 million for a single case. " As well with my opponents statistic "A 2003 legislative audit in Kansas found that the estimated cost of a death penalty case was 70% more than the cost of a comparable non-death penalty case. Death penalty case costs were counted through to execution (median cost $1.26 million). Non-death penalty case costs were counted through to the end of incarceration (median cost $740,000). " Therefore, I have clearly shown that the death penalty does cost less than not having the death penalty. Even if you do not buy this argument you can extend my previous argument, which was the Thomas Eddlem quote, "Justice isn't up for sale to the lowest bidder. " This shows that even if you agree with my opponent that the death penalty does cost more, that it is not significant because we should look at providing justice, which I have shown can only be provided through the death penalty. Now since I have successfully defeated my opponents points, you must see that I have upheld my burden for this round.