On balance, Death Penalty as a punishment has a negative impact on the society

Thanks to Pro for the debate. My case A) Recidivism You can extend the argument that lowered recidivism rates in murder are due to harsher penalties. Pro asserts that most murders are committed in a "fit of rage", yet to even qualify for capital murder crimes typically have to be premeditated[1]. Pro's responses to this argument are perplexing. She's failed to argue against any my examples, yet still tries to argue that life imprisonment solves...and yet, as I will reiterate one of my examples was of someone serving a life sentence who still killed 3 people. I also provided statistics showing how the danger of escape or killing in prison is possible, without a response from Pro. For a more extensive list of murderers who murdered again, see R1. Pro gives statistics (way too late in the debate) showing that prison escapes are rare, but you have to prefer mine that study the kinds of criminals condemned to die and shows much higher rates of break outs for these people. Pro also drops that poorer countries can't afford proper security measures to contain murderers so you can extend that. All she argues is (again way too late in the debate) that the death penalty costs more. First it's unfair for her to make this argument so late into the debate, secondly turn this argument as it proves my logic on life imprisonment and innocence--the costs of appeals are so high that there's no way countries will give them to people given life in prison--this is why they are far less likely to get out if innocent. Third this is an attack on the US system specifically, not an a priori argument against the death penalty. Fourth Pro gains no advantage--she argues this money COULD be used to improve security, but unless abolishing the death penalty will cause states to put more money into security she gains no advantage. Thus this point is callously writing away lives to save money. Remember, the social purpose of a justice system is to prevent future crime. Life imprisonment is inferior to the death penalty in this regard. B) DeterrenceHonestly I'm pretty disappointed with Pro for dropping tons of new evidence/arguments against this in the final round. It's a really cheap tactic.Regardless, Pros arguments fundamentally fail. It's nice that she has a card that surveyed criminologists disagree with the deterrence but unless she had given a compelling logical warrant from one of them that overpowers mine, the mere opinions of a group of people talking about research don't win over the data I've presented. I even cited a murderer who said he committed his murder because he "knew [he] wouldn't go to the chair". Like Rothbard said, it goes without saying that the death penalty deters some murders. Pro argues that people are so afraid of death that they're statistically significantly more likely to try to escape yet doesn't address anywhere that people follow their incentives. She just says "flawed models" as if attacking the research is somehow attacking the logical warrant. Pro doesnt even cite any research contrary to mine. The models are probably flawed because there are so many variables, but if each and every conclusion points the same way (if there are studies showing the opposite Pro didn't show them) then it's clear where this point flows.Pro again drops the statistical data I presented. The good thing about my data is it compares the metaphorical apples to apples. Her statistic (brought in way too late) comparing the different states in the US is not compelling as the states are all different, sometimes radically so. They have different climates, populations, size, police forces, justice systems, and to try and compare them using one policy is wholly unacceptable. Prefer my comparison of a specific state and a specific county to itself. Again this is not to say that all the decrease can be attributed to the death penalty, but rather that the studies, statistics, untouched warrant of people following their incentives and the actual murderer agreeing with the deterrent effect provide a more compelling rationale to the question of deterrence than anything Pro has offered.Pro brings up another new argument that some people want the death penalty. First she cites Jodi Arias who immediately after flip flopped and pled for life[2]. More importantly this is an extremely uncompelling argument not least because she gives no statistical data but because death is a huge negative incentive for obvious reasons. If Pro thinks enough people don't mind death to have a significant impact on deterrence she shouldn't have argued that innocents getting executed is bad. To take a quick sample in the US only 1 out of 43 people executed in 2012 wanted the death penalty[3].Remember that the social purpose of the justice system. It should err on the side of deterrence.Life imprisonmentPro still doesnt solve for her own case. She bizarrely argues that the reason non EU countries abolished life imprisonment was because they were influenced by European countries then argues that the EU carries no clout despite European countries having colonized virtually every country in the world. Along with responding too late to my comparison of the UK and the US she fails to understand it. Even if terms in the UK are on the up they're still SIGNIFICANTLY shorter than the US. Like deterrence, the logical warrant behind this argument was dropped as Pro focused her attacks on specific details. At the very least the chances of life imprisonment being abolished significantly increases if the death penalty is gone.Opponents case a) FutilePro argues that the death penalty is the same from societies viewpoint as life (despite my case proving the very opposite), but she argues this devalues life because it is a "state sponsored judgment on the validity of your life." The problem is she never explained why this devalues life and even if you buy this it's non unique. Life imprisonment is a state sponsored judgement on the validity of your freedom if this is the case. There is simply no substance to this argument, and it is not properly weighed to determine its impact. b) Innocence Pro argues that there are other ways a person could be wrongly convicted. This is true, but unfortunately it's brought up way too late in the debate and she doesn't impact it. The fact is that the chances of executing an innocent are decreasing significantly every year, and the healthy societal effects of the death penalty vastly outweigh this. Pro gives no numbers on how many innocents die so we can't weigh it.I'm sorry Pro didn't find my numbers about non death row releases. To clarify, the article gave the number of death row exonerations followed by the number of total exonerations, so it was deducted by simple math. Pro makes no response to the statistics I cited. People sentenced to die who are innocent are more likely to get out by a factor of about 44 (.07% of lifers released on innocence compared with 3.1% of those condemned to die). Pro argues that death row inmates are underrepresented in the released from new technology, but 5% of those released on DNA evidence being death sentences and death sentences representing ~2.5% murder convictions[4] shows how OVER represented death row inmates are in those freed. This shows once again how the pressures involved with the death penalty forces extra scrutiny be applied to those cases. Pro drops my argument about the appeals process and how this will not exist for life prisoners meaning innocents have fewer chances to get their message out. Pro also argues that the effort will shift down to LWOP but she failed to counter my arguments about efficiency. The sheer amount of life prisoners will overwhelm the few people dedicated to proving innocence--this is why they do this so rarely right now. The death penalty also adds a sense of urgency to motivate otherwise unaffiliated people. Thus if we value the freedom of innocents, and the lives of innocents, we must negate.http://tinyurl.com...;