The US should abolish capital punishment

(1) Saving livesPro has two arguments against deterrence: first, all the studies I submitted were critiqued by the National Research Council, and second, the death penalty seems to have a correlation with increased homicide rates, rather than reduced ones. Pro drops the study by John Lott which I cited. The conclusion of that study was that each execution, on balance, deters 15 murders. It also concluded that the death penalty was responsible for 12 - 14% of the crime drop in the 1990s. The study isn't addressed by the National Research Council. Lott's study does take into consideration the effect of life without parole imprisonment in its calculation. Pro doesn't prove that Lott's study makes non-credible assumptions, because the research isn't even analyzed by the National Research Council. Lott also showed that criminals behave rationally by taking a cost-benefit analysis before crime. [1]Pro also drops the study by Paul Zimmerman. The NRC report Pro uses to defend against my studies only reviewed a 2004 study by Zimmerman, but the study I referred to was a 2009 study published in the journal "American Law and Economics Review," which was not reviewed by the NRC. It concludes that an execution deters 14 murders. [2] The NRC report ignores half of the studies that support deterrence and gives no clear reason for excluding those studies. It also doesn't adequately criticize the problems with studies that conclude a lack of deterrent effect. Next, let me address each of the points made by the report.Pro claims that the studies in question don't take into account the possible deterrent effect of noncapital punishments such as life without parole. That is objectively false. The research presented actually documents a drop in crime as a result of the death penalty. It doesn't just study the causation link, and the psychology of criminals. The studies I presented also discuss the correlation between the death penalty and the drop in crime. According to the study by Mocan and Gittings, when New York State, New Hampshire and Kansas adopted the death penalty, there was a significant drop in the murder rate. When New Jersey and Massachusetts abolished capital punishment, the homicide rate rose. Note that life without parole existed in these states throughout, which means the studies do take into account the effect of noncapital punishment. The murderer doesn't need to estimate the objective risk of his gaining capital punishment. The mere possibility is sufficient to deter. Furthermore, this point also fails to account for the statistical evidence that my research brings in. Empirical research doesn't necessarily need to analyze motivations, as long as most people do act in a way that seems "rational," and that would explain the correlation best. Pro says that the deterrence studies make non-credible assumptions. What are those assumptions? I agree that the effect of capital punishment isn't the same across states and years, but there is a steady rate of crime drop in states that introduce capital punishment from each starting point of capital punishment. A study that maps that correlation doesn't necessarily make any "non-credible assumptions."The idea that the death penalty increases crime rates is nonsense. Merely because the crime rates in states without the death penalty doesn’t imply anything, because there’s no evidence to document that those rates have anything to do with the death penalty. There are multiple factors that influence crime rates. But my research shows causation as well because it shows a drop in crime on introduction of capital punishment; these merely show overall crime rates regardless of capital punishment. I have research from actual peer-reviewed papers that show that states such as New York, New Hampshire, and Kansas experienced homicide drops when they adopted the death penalty. Pro’s first graph is based on a calculation by Joshua Kamin, that was never published in a peer-reviewed journal. The second graph doesn’t prove anything, because of the years when California didn’t have the death penalty - the 1990s, when America experienced a major drop in crime throughout the nation as result of multiple factors. Capital punishment prevents recidivism. The first statistic is still valid, because capital punishment would also apply to some of those released from a prison sentence. It proves that there’s a high recidivism rate, whether or not the person is released from prison, and the chance of a death sentence means the chance of preventing further murders. As for the third statistic, the mere fact that there have been in-prison murders means the murders could have also been committed under life imprisonment, and that life imprisonment wouldn’t prevent the in-prison murders from happening. Take the case of Christopher Scarver. He committed two in-prison murders after being sentenced to life imprisonment. The mere fact that such murders happens means the government is obligated to prevent them and prevent cost loss. Christopher Scarver is living proof that in-prison murders occur even in life imprisonment. (2) Right to lifeThe death penalty doesn’t directly violate the right to life. I drop the Constitution arguments. First, the right to life isn’t absolute. Pro claims that military conscription isn’t a valid example because the person isn’t directly put to death, and that conscription is only in the case of emergency. So what if the person isn’t directly put to death? It still causes severe risk of death, and is often virtually a death sentence. Furthermore, the state of emergency is declared to save lives. The death penalty saves lives. So the right to life can be violated to save lives. Second, there’s no reason to even believe that the right to life trumps the death penalty’s benefits. What about the right to life of those murdered in prison, and of those whose deaths would have been prevented by a death penalty? I’ve shown that capital punishment deters homicides, and that trumps the individual right to life. (3) Economic harmsCosts are irrelevant, and are actually in favor of my position. There’s no actual means to weigh this. Pro doesn’t provide a weighing mechanism for this argument at all. Even if the government saves money, the government should put saving lives over money. Therefore, the argument is irrelevant in the face of deterrence, because the government should save lives instead of saving money, since it should seek to reduce net negative mental states, which are increased due to death. Under the framework of rule utilitarianism I established, that Pro conceded, government legislation is to prevent harm. Nonetheless, costs are also saved by deterrence. The cost of a murder to society is $17 million. I’ve defended my sources regarding deterrence, which, hence, prove that life imprisonment is more expensive than the death penalty. (4) RacismThere are multiple points to address under the prejudice argument. First, life imprisonment causes more net suffering to the criminal than the death penalty. My proposed nitrogen asphyxiation is entirely painless, and is a swift death. Life imprisonment results in very little enjoyment and lots of suffering. My proposal also involves reducing the wait on death row, thus reducing net suffering. As such, in a racist system, life imprisonment is worse. Pro claims death is too final, but death does not result in much harm, as opposed to pain. Finality doesn’t worsen punishment. Second, the claims of prejudice have been disputed. In fact, 44% of the current death row is made of whites, and 41% of blacks, which makes perfect sense when looking at the white-to-black population ratio. As for killing whites vs blacks, that has been disputed by John Lott, who says it isn’t inherently racist. Finally, there’s no reason to believe that racism outweighs the lives saved. Lives outweigh mere moral ideals that aren’t Constitutional. Regardless of whether a person killed a black or a white, he or she still killed a person, so still will allow deterrence. (5) InnocentsI concede Marquis’ calculation. Regardless, deterrence outweighs innocence: the number of homicides deterred is far greater than the number of people actually killed. And the high rate of exonerations is a good thing, since it causes less innocents to be executed. My proposal would reform the system such that cases where there’s hardcore evidence for the murder alone would qualify for the death penalty. In conclusion, deterrence and preventing recidivism outweigh everything that Pro says. None of Pro’s harms or significance outweigh mine. There were 28 executions in 2015, and each execution deters 14 murders. Therefore, that’s 395 lives saved annually. That’s a huge impact. 395 lives saved is a lot. Pro is going to kill 395 people with their proposal. Save those lives. Also, save $6.713 billion (17 million x 395, minus the difference between DP costs and non-DP costs). Vote Con. Sources:1. John R. Lott, "Freedomnomics"2. http://aler.oxfordjournals.org...