The death penalty should be abolished

I thanks adams for the opportunity to debate.I will be making three arguments. I will offer two direct contentions that argue in favor of life imprisonment over capital punishment. The first is a philosophical/psychological argument that dwells mainly on morality, justification and focuses the goals of retaliation to criminals towards rehabilitation/segregation and away from punishment. The second contends how well the death penalty acts as an efficient system of justice in accomplishing the goals of our judicial system in comparison to life imprisonment. The third contention highlights one large flaw of capital punishment. C.1 Deterministic affectNow, in reality I'm a hard determinist but I'm not going to argue for that as this would get way too off-topic. This argument convinced me when I was a compatiblist any way, so I don't think it's necessary to go that far. I am simply going to argue that deterministic affects are large enough to undermine the credibility of the death penalty and further the argument for life imprisonment. Generally when people think of the death penalty as a means of punishment, they believe it should only be reserved for the more extreme cases, such as rape and murder. The death penalty is a harsh crime so it's only logical that it would only be used for the most extreme cases. The people who commit these crimes no doubt have a very grave sense of morality, but I'd argue the death penalty is simply not justified for these cases. This is because the argument that it is justified completely fails when considering other inescapable factors. Through basic philosophical reasoning and psychological evidence we can determine that what a man does is shaped very much by things irrelevant to his will. It is common in a court case that the sentenced man might be defended on accounts of insanity. The argument flows in such examples that the blame for the man is somewhat alleviated by his mental conditions. Well I would argue that every mans mental conditions, though certainly not fitting the term crazy, are very much a result of environmental, social, genetic and other external influences. It follows that if this is the case, much of the blame for the savage actions of a man is diminished. As I said, there is certainly sufficient grounds for these claims. When pondering the concept of "free-will", it is almost inevitable to come to the conclusion that we are not nearly as free as we think. Deterministic factors affect our every action and the way we think. Growing up in a home and environment that thinks and teaches a certain way will most likely lead you to think that way. If you have a drunken father who beats you and an uncaring mother when you grow up, you will very likely have a stale sense of compassion. When pondering what to buy and not to buy at the grocery store, a basic cost/benefit analysis is taking place in your brain so that in the end, your choice is wholly decided by your natural preferences and character. If the cost is a little high, you'll only buy it if you have enough money or are someone who is a naturally uncautious buyer. Many other factors may way in. Furthermore, we can easily accept the fact that we are born with a personality consisting of a blend of thousands of different small character traits. As our character determines what we do, we can extrapolate our actions are based upon what properties we are born with; things outside of our will. Our personality then shapes according to social and environmental factors throughout our life, which are of course, also irrelevant to our will. I would posit that this is most likely even more the case for murderers and rapists. The thought of these crimes are so forwardly repellent to us that we have to wander why these people would commit such horrid acts. It is simple. They obviously are lacking in a moral conscience or intuition in comparison to ours and their development of personality was influenced in such a way as to cause them to be as such. In Erickson's 8 stages of psychosicial development (picture below) the external development of our actions can be demonstrated. "Because an infant is utterly dependent, the development of trust is based on the dependability and quality of the child's caregivers. If a child successfully develops trust, he or she will feel safe and secure in the world. Caregivers who are inconsistent, emotionally unavailable, or rejecting contribute to feelings of mistrust in the children they care for. Failure to develop trust will result in fear and a belief that the world is inconsistent and unpredictable." http://psychology.about.com...This argument obviously does not entail we simply take no action to murderers. It simply pushes segregation and rehabilitation ahead of punishment as the main goals. http://www.electrical-res.com... C.2 The risk of killing innocents Everyone should agree on the fact that every risk of note existing in our form of punishment ought to be diminished if possible. What about the utmost risk? The risk of the state killing innocent inhabitants of its own jurisdiction? Every time we send someone to their execution there is the possibility that we are sending an innocent man to his death. Despite what some people may argue, it is not a rare scenario. Well over eighty people in the past quarter century have been condemned but then released before execution. [1] http://www.the-slammer.org... This source shows detailed accounts of eleven innocents being executed and one researcher says he has found at least 74 cases in which wrongful executions have most likely taken place. http://www.justicedenied.org... And of course it is completely inevitable that there have been many times in which innocents have been executed but never proved innocent after their death. Thus the numbers are undoubtedly higher than we know of. There's not much use to prove the innocence of a dead person so the truth isn't as readily searched for. With life imprisonment however, there is still every reason to try to prove the sentenced man innocent so life imprisonment is a better system in satisfying and seeking justice. C.3 Goal efficiency Let's consider the goals of our judicial system.Punishment: From my first contention I obviously think this goal should be less relevant but it is nevertheless, so I must mention it. Both capital punishment and life imprisonment can satisfy this goal. In fact, a life in prison could be made worse than death so there's no use saying death penalty is the only option for very serious crimes. Segregation: Prison segregates criminals from society so both methods accomplish this.Deterrence: It is useless to say capital punishment accomplishes the deterrent affect better than life in prison. 88% of the experts (criminologists) agree that the DP has no deterrent affect and 87% say abolishing it wouldn't have a significant effect on the murder rate. Plus if we say the death penalty acts as a deterrence because of the strength of the punishment, I could simply state life imprisonment can certainly be made even worse than death so the argument that the death penalty acts as a more firm punishment is invalid. http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org...Rehabilitation: Here's where the main argument comes into play. Life imprisonment satisfies all the judicial goals, but the death penalty is necessarily lacking in rehabilitation. It is impossible to rehabilitate criminals if we kill them, obviously. The best system is one in which accomplishes all the goals of the system it is part of. The death penalty only serves three of these goals while life imprisonment meets four. Thus we should use life imprisonment as it is more goal efficient than the death penalty. Back to con.