The US should abolish capital punishment

Analysis The resolution should be judged by the effect on lives, and economy should come second. Since morality has not tangible effect on the people, we do not evaluate this as an argument in today’s debate. Remember, if I am to show that the effect of the death penalty is beneficial to the American people, then the judge should be comfortable with voting on the negative side. Contention 1: Deterrent effect Deterrence of crime is an obvious effect of capital punishment nationwide. If we were to observe the findings of an Emory University study in 2001, we would be able to see that in the status quo, we deter on average 14 murders per execution of capital punishments. http://cjlf.org... This is corroborated by Dr. Zimmerman in 2004 when he states that the following: “Specifically, it is estimated that each state execution deters somewhere between 4 and 25 murders per year…” https://www.unc.edu... What we end up seeing is the fact that criminals think like we do when we make decisions. They measure the pros and cons of every action before coming to a conclusion about what they should do. This is referred to as econometrics, which is where one applies an economic model to determine what action should be taken. The rest of society does this in everyday affairs when we make fiscal decisions, however, for criminals it is much different. When a criminal is committing murder, they need to weigh the pros and the cons before acting out murder, or theft, or any other crime. When we add on to the harms of committing murder, then we would obviously deter crime. In general, what needs to be brought to light is the fact that we would be saving lives in the status quo by keeping the death penalty. This is important because lives are going to be the most important factor in this debate. Remember, we can always achieve economic gain, but we must protect the lives of the American people. Contention 2: No other alternative In the status quo, we see no alternative that would keep American lives from being jeopardized besides the Death Penalty. This is due to many reasons, so I will break thin contention in half. A. Prison escapes There is no way to guarantee that the prison systems are secure enough for convicted criminals to stay in. If we were to observe the Business Insider in 2016, we can see an example of the system failing. Specifically, three men escaped a maximum security prison by cutting through the bars of the prison and making a run for it. http://www.businessinsider.com... Regardless of the likeliness of these escapes, we need to see that an escaped murderer is an inherent risk to all involved, and the general population. This has happened before and will happen again. B. Mental health My opponent may ask for treatment as opposed to incarceration, however this is flawed more a few reasons. One, in the status quo, we do not see that mental health is considered a priority for the American government. We can see this when we turn toward a recent article from the Institute of Policy Studies which shows that there is no mandate stating that states have to spend at all on mental health, leaving 4 million children without help despite a diagnosis. http://www.ips-dc.org... This leads to my point, there would be no federal support for more health spending to care for all of the people on death row to get help. If we looked at Death Penalty Focus, we would see that nearly all people on death row have some sort of mental illness or disease due to trauma or sexual abuse. https://death.rdsecure.org... Coupled with the fact that the current mental health system is underfunded, any type of action to ban the death penalty would either mean putting people with mental health problems behind bars, or overextending our mental health resources to account for the people on death row, which is not likely at all to happen given the fact that we won’t even cover people who are innocent and congress will see this fact as well. Contention 3: Innocent people not executed I am sure since we are valuing lives into today’s debate that my opponent will bring up whether or not innocents are executed. This is a false premise. First, we need to look toward advancing technology completely nullifying this argument. We now have DNA evidence, which according to the National Academy of Sciences has no reason to be doubted. Not only this, but the entire process is costly because of the fact that evidence has to be certain. Not only this, but the lengthy appeals process means that there are plenty of opportunities for people to get off of death row if there was a faulty sentence given. Not only this, but according to Lawyers.com, there is a six to ten-year gap usually where those convicted are able to get appeals. These appeals are very widespread throughout the prison system and lead to more innocent people being exonerated for their crimes. Not only this, but guilty bargains, according to the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in 2009, actually result in long prison sentences and no death penalty or not. Usually the person in question committed the crime, but there was an error in court procedure leading to a different sentence. What is shown with the previous evidence and the fact that According to the Death Penalty Information Center shows a chart that displays the fact that in the last few years there have been less exonerations all point toward a more advanced and precise system. Thus, given the fact that my opponent has nothing to stand on for the most important point, lives, we must negate. http://www.forensicsciencedegree.org... http://criminal.lawyers.com... http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org... Contention 4: Economic cost not as large as supposed If we were to look at the Yale Law Journal in 1989, we would see that the death penalty results in the rate of plea bargains being larger in states with the death penalty. https://www.jstor.org... Not only this, but plea bargains are also known to lower cost of the death penalty, which I am sure my opponent will bring up. This is because the plea bargains result in the nuanced cycle of appeal courts, and the nuanced system in general, being abandoned. This is because of the incentive of a lesser sentence and avoiding the death penalty. Remember, econometrics dictates that we see our decisions through economic models, weighing the pro and cons of every decision before making one, which is how the criminal will judge what the criminal will do. However, we need to see that regardless of the economics of capital punishment, the death penalty is a necessary expense due to the deterrent effect on crime. This single impact means the lives of many will be saved, and whether we save money is not as important as if we protect people. Nevertheless, we do see that the economic cost of the death penalty is not as high as many think, due to the savings from the plea bargain. Because of this, negate. OBV 1: Framework My opponent has used a net benefit framework to the American people. However, we need to see that regardless of whether we affirm or negate, people will be harmed. Ergo, we need to look under a utilitarian framework that benefits the most people. Rebuttal 1: Psychological harms This is true, but remember we are looking at the whole of American people. Since I have proven the fact that the death penalty deters crime, we need to see that the benefit of less crime results in a better American society. Also, families will be harmed, but there are always mental health facilities for people who suffer from psychological trauma. My opponent may remember the fact that the mental health system is underfunded, however, we see that the few executions in the status quo means less stress on the system. Rebuttal 2: Inhumane Indeed, one may claim this, but it matters very little in this debate. Remember, we are looking toward net benefits to society, and while the process may be inhumane, we still need to see that the deterrent to crime outweighs this as it applies to most people, especially those who are not murderers. Rebuttal 3: Innocence I have already shown you that in the status quo this does not happen due to increased technology in forensics as well as the availability of plea bargains leading to exonerations. There are ore exonerations in the status quo while there are less people being given the death penalty. Also, allow me to show why the study provided ultimately is not valid. The link below shows the actual study, and let us see what they use to back up their findings. “We examine exonerations among defendants sentenced to death from the beginning of the “modern” death penalty in the United States in 1973, after the Supreme Court invalidated all prior death sentencing laws (11), through the end of 2004.” This is not the status quo, so this is outdated. This is because the average wait on death row is 10 years as referenced before, meaning that the exonerations easily come from the 90s, hich was different in comparison. http://www.pnas.org... Conclusion We see that capital punishment has net benefits to the American people through lives saved. Since this is the metric we are viewing this debate through, the obvious answer is a negative vote.