Resolved: Capital punishment ought not be continued in the United States.

"Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders." -Albert Camus I stand in firm affirmation that capital punishment (the death penalty) ought not be continued in the United States. First to clarify I will provide a few definitions to clarify the resolution. Ought: used to express duty or moral obligation Capital punishment: punishment by death for a crime; death penalty As a point of clarification as well currently 35 states within the United States practice the death penalty. The first reason we ought not continue the use of the death penalty is simply the cost it presents to our nation. The opposite punishment for the death penalty is life imprisonment and on the surface this seems like a more costly means of punishing criminals. However, we could not be more wrong. MSNBC finds from recent surveys that the death penalty is tens of millions dollars more expensive than life imprisonment. Why should we spend millions of more dollars to execute a prisoner when we could just hold them for their life in prison without parol. We just recently when through a recession and a great way to have saved money during this time would have been to eliminate the death penalty all together. We are taking millions of dollars here that 35 states are using up to execute prisoners. Think of all the money we could save if we simply stopped using it. Another reason that capital punishment should no longer be practiced is the fact that we are never sure that the person that we are killing is one hundred percent guilty. Our justice system is not perfect by any means and we should know this. At times jurys get it wrong. At times our justice system fails and innocent people are sent to jail. We don't know for a full certainty in cases that the person we are sending to death row is guilty of the crime they were prosecuted for. Amnesty USA brings up the statistic that as of 1973, 130 people have been released from death row after wrongful convictions. Those numbers alone prove that our judicial system isn't perfect. Now you may say that our justice system prevailed when we found these people to be wrongfully convicted. However, how do we know that the other people who were executed just weren't lucky enough to have someone uncover the truth about their innocence in time. When our justice system sends people to death row who are in fact innocent, we can see that we can't practice the death penalty when we have no doubts in our mind that the person going to be executed is 100% guilty. It is for that fact alone that the death penalty should be eliminated. We have to see that the continued use of the death penalty is just not smart on our nations behalf. We argue that murder is an awful crime, but then our government turns around and commits murder itself. As Gandhi once said "An eye for an eye leaves everyone blind." I understand we are striving for justice which is a great and noble goal. However, to say that life imprisonment does not supply this same sort of justice is incorrect. These criminals are removed from society and have their freedom stripped from them. This way the government will also save money and if innocent people are sent to jail, we have more time to uncover their innocence without the idea that we may be executing innocent people. I now open the floor to my opponent and look forward to the debate. Sources: http://www.msnbc.msn.com... http://www.amnestyusa.org...