Death Penalty over Life Imprisonment Without Possibility of Parole

The death penalty is morally justified. My value is vengeance. I define vengeance with the definition from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary; the act of doing something to hurt someone because that person did something that hurt you or someone else. I will be speaking specifically of capital punishment in America throughout the duration of the debate, although will cover capital punishment in general. The death penalty, with revisions, can cost far less than life in prison, is morally justified, and constitutionally justified. The death penalty should still stand, though under laws regarding the five California Propositions on capital punishment by Judge Arthur L. Alarcon and Paula M. Mitchell; in particular the fourth and third. The problems with the death penalty, is that it is expensive. That is the only viable argument extended by those who oppose it. This can be cut, dramatically if we follow propositions 3 and 4. Proposition 3 is, in its essence, narrowing the number of death eligible crimes. This will remove many persons from death row. Proposition 4 is stating that video and/or scientific evidence is required for the accusation to stand against the defendant. Eyewitness accounts are very unreliable, as many times they can relate to viewing a silhouette, or viewing someone in the dark (as seen in the Mark Zimmerman case). When I regard proposition 3, I propose that death penalty eligible crimes be limited to first-degree murder, second-degree murder, and third degree murder. I am not including manslaughter and matters where a person purposely ended the life of another, without regards to self-defense of he who is convicted of murder. The cost of the death penalty in California has been the following: Pretrial and trial costs, summed, are 1.94 billion dollars, Automatic Appeals and State Habeas Corpus Petition, 0.925 billion dollars, Federal Habeas Corpus Appeals, 0.775 billion dollars, and last but most certainly not least, cost of incarceration, or 1 billion dollars. This costs about 170 million dollars more than life in prison. This can easily be fixed to be cheaper and plus efficiency. You can cut costs dramatically with propositions 4 and 3, by putting fewer people there to begin with, and faster trials (caused of course by scientific or video evidence needed). That is the economical portion of this case. The death penalty is purely human. If you were to have your family killed by a man, would you want to see that man in prison for life, where he would receive free medical care, longer life than your family in general, access to the ability to experience (sunlight, taste, well-rested day, feeling in general), or for the person to be properly taken action upon, as you would feel best fit naturally, as a dead man? This is the reason for wars. To kill and avenge those who are dead and cannot fend for themselves. This is not a violation of human rights. This is the vengeance for human rights succeeded by this criminal of whom my opponent argues do not deserve death. The human right found in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 3, as it states "Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person". This right has allegedly been refused by the alleged criminal. The death penalty is constitutional. The 5th Amendment to the Constitution states: "No person shall be ... deprived of life ... without due process of law." The 14th Amendment states: "No state shall ... deprive any person of life ... without due process of law.". Not only do these amendments support the death penalty, but the Supreme Court noted that when the Eighth Amendment was written regarding cruel and unusual punishment, capital punishment was a common sanction in every State. The US Supreme Court, for over 200 years, repeatedly declared the death penalty to be constitutional (except for the time span between 1972 to 1976). Capital punishment is not "wrong" or "evil", it is not hanging a given person for speaking up against an ideal, is not a punishment for graffiti, nor is it such as for vandalizing a store. It is for punishments we feel are especially harmful to our society. This is not a tyranny, and shall not be ruled as such. This is a republic based on the idea that all men are created equal! We cannot do with one committing murder, as he had not treated the victim as such equality as framed by our forefathers, and by such an action he shall be treated equally as his victim, with death and nothing lesser. Capital punishment being nonexistent and replaced with life in prison without possibility of parole, is unfair to he who may have been killed by the criminal. For such a strongly cynical action against that person, if not against the American people in general, is it not best for us to penalize these people so harshly that no others dare make the mistake. Is it truly well to show those who may commit murder that the penalty is not just spending a large to meek remainder of their life in prison? All this truly would be is being separated from society. That is it. I could kill someone. I could be imprisoned and not receive capital punishment, as my opponent believes. I could live significantly longer than with death penalty, speak with peers, have foodstuffs provided, have medical assistance, and even see daylight! Prisoner-committed acts of violence are the small price to pay for life. Fear of death is a superior deterrent when placed alongside life imprisonment without possibility of parole. The human will to live is an instinct outdone by absolutely nothing. Every human wants to live. Every human can say they do not want to live, but they are instinctually programmed to. Amnesty International states "In-depth report on United States' executions of the mentally ill. Includes definitions of terminology, explanations of common and relevant mental conditions, primary-source quotations, current national and international statistics, and recommendations by an American Bar Association task force. The report finds and provides startling new information such as that 5-10% of today's Death Row inmates suffer from serious mental illness; it also draws unique connections between certain states' mental health funding and execution rates." This "serious mental illness" can interfere with instincts, for those who are labeled as such have minds, which are not oriented as the rest of the population of the United States of America. This would mean that they would think slightly differently, and therefore 5-10% is the maximum percentage of persons in death row who could be lacking the instinctual will to live.