The United States should abolish the Death Penalty.

I hope that my arguments can help you change your view on this topic (although mine is not completely solid as well). Good luck, and thank you for accepting this debate. CRITERION: The criterion for this debate is health. Therefore, the side that best protects the health of all United States citizens, civilians or prisoners ultimately should win this debate. PLAN: Since we are abolishing the death penalty, we need a replacement for those who commit the crimes that would normally be punished by death. The propositions replacement is LWOP, which is criminals spending their life in prison. We plan to increase security of prisons by increasing the number of guards and making sure that the technology for the security systems stays at its standard, thus eliminating the already minimal and rare cases of recidivism. Studies show that states with LWOP have lesser crime rates and spend less money on criminals, thus showing the reliability of this plan. We will further explain the benefits in our contentions CONTENTIONS: C1: LWOP prevents more crime and murder than the death penalty. Many people think that there is some sort of deterrence with the death penalty in effect, but in truth it isn"t like that at all. "There is no credible evidence that the death penalty deters crime more effectively than long terms of imprisonment. States that have death penalty laws do not have lower crime rates or murder rates than states without such laws. And states that have abolished capital punishment show no significant changes in either crime or murder rates. The death penalty has no deterrent effect. Claims that each execution deters a certain number of murders have been thoroughly discredited by social science research." (The American Civil Liberties Union, "The Death Penalty: Questions and Answers") So now you all know that there is no evidence that the death penalty deters, but we can go even further, and say that the death penalty causes more crime and murder than LWOP. A Study By the Death Penalty Information Center shows that all the states without the death penalty all had lesser crime and murder rates than states with the death penalty, with a whooping statistic of 28% lower crime and murder rates than states with the death penalty. C2: The death penalty can fail, killing men and women that have not committed any crimes. Samuel Gross of the University of Michigan led a group of researchers conducting a study. This study, using numbers from the US Bureau of Justice, a federal government agency, found that many innocents die from the death penalty. The study concluded that "4 percent of the people who have died in the last 35 years were innocent." That"s about 50 people. (Elizabeth Lopatto, Forbes) There are many specific cases of this. One is of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was put on death row for supposed arson (the burning of his house) which led to the death of his three children. He was executed in February 2004, but in December of that year, Gerald Hurst, who was an American chemist and fire investigator known nationally for his work, reviewed the documents used in the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, including many trial transcripts as well as an hour long videotape of the aftermath of the fire. He concluded that there was no way Willingham had set off the fire, saying that "There's nothing to suggest to any reasonable arson investigator that this was an arson fire. It was just a [regular] fire." (David Grann, The New Yorker, 9/7/09) There are many other cases of this innocent execution, and as you may realize, this is extremely morally wrong, and goes under our criterion of health because many innocents are dying. C3: The death penalty has a colossal cost. The death penalty is extremely morally wrong and kills innocent citizens, yet we pay so much money for the executions. Arthur L. Alarcon, Senior Judge for the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and Paula M. Mitchell, Adjunct Professor of Law, wrote the following in the June 2011 article published in Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review: "Our research has revealed that $4 billion of state and federal taxpayer money has been expended administering the death penalty in California since 1978...The costs associated with death penalty trials that took place between 1983 and 2006 averaged about $1 million more per trial than the costs of average non"death penalty homicide trials.." "In the course of my work, I believe I have reviewed every state and federal study of the costs of the death penalty in the past 25 years. One element is common to all of these studies: They all concluded that the cost of the death penalty amounts to a net expense to the state and the taxpayers. Or to put it differently,the death penalty is clearly more expensive than a system handling similar cases with a lesser punishment. It combines the costliest parts of both punishments: lengthy and complicated death penalty trials, followed by incarceration for life... Everything that is needed for an ordinary trial is needed for a death penalty case, only more so. (Richard C. Dieter, Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information Center) What this basically means is that not only is the death penalty much more expensive than any other form of punishment at first but it also shows that the long-term cost is enormous. With $4 billion (which is what the death penalty has costed since 1978) we could feed roughly 175,000 United States citizens for a year, which can increase the health of the United States' people. So, I have just proven that the death penalty is extremely wrong and negatively affects the health of the people, fulfilling my burden of proof as Pro. I look forward to my opponent's speech. Good luck!