The US should abolish capital punishment

No constructive arguments, are allowed this round, thus mine will be purely defense and rebuttals. DeterrenceCon points out that I dropped the study done by John Lott and the study done by Zimmerman, my bad, I was limited by character space, I will address them now. Firstly, the John Lott “study” is not a study, it is actually a book, which neither I, nor the judges can access unless we pay $20 dollars. Since neither I, nor the judges can access the source, there is no reason to believe that the context supports the conclusion. My case on deterrence goes sourced, and thus my case should be prefered by logical analysis. Second, Con says that the study done by Zimmerman, which Con thankfully finally cites as the 2009 study published in “American Law and Economics Review”, was not included in the report. If you look at the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation list [1], you will see Paul R. Zimmerman “Statistical Variability and the Deterrent Effect of the Death Penalty” American Law and Economics Review (2009) as the 4th one down. Con also says that the NRC ignores half of the studies done that support deterrence. Con doesn’t show any sources that are ignored, and thus we have no reason to believe that there are any sources ignored. Con also says that the report does not adequately criticize the problems with the studies, but does not explain. Again, this is a warrantless claim. Next, Con attacks defends the 3 major flaws in the study. 1) Con claims that the studies he presents discuss the correlation between the death penalty and drop in crime. He justifies this by saying that according to Mocan & Gittings (2010), when the death penalty was imposed in a some states, the crime rate dropped, but when it was abolished, the crime rate rose. Sadly, Con misunderstands what the report meant. The problem with the studies that Con cites is that they don’t take into account how aggressively the states states apply the death penalty. Among the states that have a death penalty, the frequency in which it is used varies greatly. For example, since 1976, three states: Florida, Texas, and Virginia have accounted for more than half of all executions carried out in the United States, even though 40 states and the federal government enforced a death penalty during this period. The legal status of the death penalty is also important because numerous differences across states in the types of offenses that are capital eligible and the administrative processes related to the imposition and appeal of the death sentences are relevant in defining aspects of the sanction regime (the way an authority administers a penalty) that have the potential to influence deterrence [2]. The studies that Con uses ignore both of these factors, as well as many others, which makes the results contaminated from capital and noncapital penalties. Even if, we ignore the above, the increased crime rate in those states could be the result of any number of things, such as such as how much law enforcement gets payed, the effectiveness of law enforcement, education level, state culture, population density, urbanization degree, religious characteristics, policies of the criminal justice system, youth concentration, modes of transportation, poverty levels, environment, organized crime, tourism, job availability, etc.Either way, the the studies aren’t credible, and this point still stands. 2) Con says that the murderer doesn’t need to evaluate objective risk, the mere possibility is enough to deter and that studies don’t need to analyze motivations, as long as people act rationally, the correlation is explained. They do. Con is claiming that when a potential murderer is deciding whether to commit a homicide or not, the fact that a death penalty exists is going to deter them from committing the crime. If this is true, the criminal (being rational as Con claims), will do a cost-benefit analysis, and the risk involved with being convicted factors into that cost part. If the risk of being sentenced with a death penalty is low, or the risk of a being sentenced with a death penalty is high, factors into the cost part differently. What Con is saying, is the risk of being sentenced with a death penalty is low, or high, factors into the cost part equally. Second, causation is what Con is after to prove his case. If the death penalty merely correlates with decreased homicide rates, then there is no reason to not abolish the death penalty, as it is not the cause of decreased homicide rates. The deterrence argument only stands if credible causation is proven, thus even if 3) In this point, Con asks what is an example of assumptions that are not credible, and studies that map the correlation between crime rates and the introduction of the DP isn’t a non-credible assumption. The report lists 4 non-credible assumptions [3]:(1) that the death penalty measures are independent of the unobserved factors influencing homicide (2) that certain observed covariates, called instrumental variables, are correlated with the death penalty but not with the unobserved factors that influence homicide(3) that the effect of the death penalty is the same for all states and years(4) that the sanction regimes of adjacent states do not have any bearing on the effect of the death penalty in a particular state. A deeper analysis of (3), can be found in the report if you wish. Next Con attacks my graphs. Con first says that the graphs don’t show any relationship between crime and the death penalty, they do, states with death penalty have higher crime than states without death penalty, that is a relationship. Con also says that my graphs are a result of external factors. If my graphs are negated by external factors, so are all of Con’s on deterrence because the drop of homicide rates in New York, New Hampshire, and Kansas could have been a result of thousands of factors as well. RecidivismCon tries to maintain the first statistic. This makes zero sense. The only difference between the world I’m proposing, and the world Con is proposing is the existence of the DP. Therefore, the only difference in the criminal justice system would be those currently on death row would be transferred to life imprisonment with no chance of parole, and any crime worthy of a DP, would instead be life imprisonment with no chance of parole. Thus, people who are released from prison, has relevance to these worlds, since it would be the same across them. Con does not explain why this is still relevant, merely just say that it is. Even if there is a high recidivism rate, it has no impact on whether there should be a DP unless it relates to people that would have had a death sentence, but instead got life imprisonment. Con then says that life imprisonment won’t stop in-prison murders from happening. I never said it would. But it only matters if, again, if DP would prevent it, and it won’t, as explained above. The case of Christopher Carver would only have an impact if he did that while in death row. If not, that same thing will happen whether there’s a DP or not. And since Con only said it happened in life imprisonment, it doesn’t matter. Right to LifeCon says that a mandatory conscription indirectly causes death. Even if this is the case, it only happens in a state of emergency, but even then, the Right to Life cannot be violated. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights [4] describes what rights and laws can be derogated. In Article 4, it says that no laws from articles articles 6, 7, 8, 11, 15, 16 and 18 can be derogated in a state of emergency. Guess what article 6 is,“Every human being has the inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.”I win this argument, because the right to life is entirely absolute. CostCon says that lives outweigh cost, I agree. But this still has impact. Since I have defeated all of Con’s sources on deterrence, I win the argument, thus the death penalty costs more than life imprisonment. RacismCon suggests new ways of execution, this is a change in the current system, and since Con is defending the current system, this is irrelevant. Con’s argument makes no sense. We are talking about sentencing someone to death because of racial discrimination, and Con is proposing we execute them instead of life imprisonment, to reduce suffering. If someone is wrongly convicted because of their race, executing them would give us no chance to make up for it. I’m sure that the person would like to be released from life imprisonment with compensation money than be dead. As long as that statement holds true, my argument holds true as well. Con then says that 44% of the death row population is white, and 41% is black. Con says this correctly represents the general population. Considering the general population is 53% white, and 2.5% black, then the death row population should have 21 times more white people than black, by Con’s statistics, it most definitely does not. Con then just says that John Lott says that the death penalty isn’t inherently racist. We know it isn’t inherently racist, but it is racist currently. Even if we were to accept it wasn’t currently racist, this isn’t really evidence for it, more an Appeal to Authority. Con drops my lawyer quality argument. InnocentsCon says that the innocent lives saved by deterrence outweighs the innocents executed, but since I won deterrent argument, I win this one as well. Con then proposes some kind of reform, which isn’t allowed since we are debating the current system. [1] http://tinyurl.com...[2] http://tinyurl.com...[3] http://tinyurl.com...[4] http://tinyurl.com...