Resolved: The US should abolish capital punishment.

Innocent lives:Con claims that there is no difference between violations of rights, but this is absurd. All rights violations are bad, but the gravity of a rights violation matters, particularly when comparing the tortures one faces on death row and absolute loss that results from death to an increased likelihood of divorce after serving a sentence. This isn’t irrelevant.Con argues that a better public defense will solve. They’ve given no means by which this could be done. This vague solution has no solvency, and unless Con means to force more and better law students to become public defenders, the problems they cited will persist. No solution will be absolute. Nothing will solve for the bias and human error resulting from legal counsel, justices, and politicians who craft prejudiced policy. This is the system that many are entirely dependent upon to survive in Con’s world - any risk is too much.Con makes the claim (w/o evidence) that the DP raises scrutiny. Innocent lives are still lost. “Scrutiny” only manifests as extensive delays on executions, which cause the severe psychological harms we’ve cited. Con also drops that these harms are substantial enough lead to suicides among innocent people. The trauma of conviction, combined with the ever looming threat of death, causes lasting harms that Con ignores.Injustices:Given that bias is pervasive, should a biased legal system be allowed to both imprison AND end lives? We've argued that there's a huge difference between the two, one that Con has essentially ignored. A clearly racist system should not be allowed the means to end lives and torture people. Other sentences are transient or offer more time for reversal. They provide more opportunities for justice to be served. This is the warrant we gave, which Con dropped, for why the DP debases “innocent until proven guilty”: it inherently limits the opportunity for innocence to be established. Execution limits it. In a system where defendants are often unable to present their full case due to bias and/or the lack of competent legal counsel, trials are slanted against them and in favor of guilt. A biased system may be a constant, but its capacity to end lives should not be.Nor should it be allowed to subject people to unnecessary, drawn out physical and psychological tortures that go well beyond the sentence. Torture is objectively both cruel and unusual. Con drops the high rate of botched lethal injections and the extreme psychological suffering that accompanies constantly pushing back executions, utterly ignoring mental instability and suicide rates. It is not the slightest bit circular to say that these are cruel and unusual when we've justified how they cause excessive harm.Con seems to think that all they have to do is blip out other means of solving a given problem and it's as good as solved, but every suggestion they’ve made is so incredibly vague and nebulous that none of them could function as meaningful policy. Con offers no drug to “render the subject unconscious” prior to execution. Con doesn’t explain how they can bypass state-by-state decision-making to mandate such a change.[1] “Better privacy” isn't a policy and isn't even solving for any clear harm. Without a clear, implementable alternative, Con must defend the status quo.Justice for All:We've explained how the DP contributes to mental illness in prisons, increasing the danger that prisoners pose to themselves and others. We've examined how the DP is fundamentally at odds with the concept of rehabilitation, as it treats many as beyond saving, relegating them to a permanent state of suffering. Con dropped all of this. It doesn't matter if other aspects of our justice system reinforce retribution – the DP entrenches retributive justice uniquely. When you send the message to all criminals that many of them are beyond rehabilitating, it shoves back any perception that criminals can re-integrate into and become upstanding members of society, leading to recidivism.When the justice system as a whole is problematic, we should work to correct it. That requires re-examining cases and making a concerted effort to determine if there was wrongdoing in the process of conviction. That's no longer an option for someone who has been executed. Their name can be cleared, but they can no longer receive any benefit from that process. Con wishes to subvert their basic justice – their actual lives – for correlative effects that the DP has on the minds of a disparate number of potential criminals. But if you're choosing to throw out justice, then you must not ignore our argument regarding how the DP alters mindsets of actual criminals to increase recidivism, which we've shown to be dramatically reduced in a more rehabilitative system. It's a similar correlation, with the reverse outcome. Voters, if you're going to buy into the mindset that we can alter criminal behavior solely by threatening with the DP, then recognize that that door swings both ways, but that the effects of reducing recidivism are far more pronounced.DP Morality:Our case examines the immorality of the DP, particularly with regards to justice and loss of innocent life. Con’s attempts to dismiss that on the basis that there is morality in punishing criminals is ridiculous - it does not justify the DP. So justice and immorality do have a place in this debate, and saving more innocent lives is not the sole impact that should be evaluated. There are several others to consider:All of life has value, no matter its perceived innocence or guilt. If we’re going to do a by-the-numbers comparison of life lost, then those numbers should include all lives.If innocent life does matter more, it is because of the unjustness of their sentencing. So if we consider these lives to be more important, then we need to consider all injustices, and the focus of this debate should be on the justness of the DP.The justice system being used to end an innocent life is not just another number - it represents an utter failure of that system, one that metes out death to individuals who are innocent. Meanwhile, if at some point in the future someone might decide to risk LWOP and carry out a homicide, that action reflects on that individual, not on the system as a whole. Their lives are innocent, but it is not the justice system ending them. The value difference is the means by which those lives were lost, and these have more weight because they affect the overall justness of the system.Deterrence:Most capital crimes are committed in the heat of the moment, whether under emotional stress or under the influence of drugs.[2] Even among those who plan out their crimes, the majority have a history of mood or psychotic disorders that impair their ability to think rationally.[3] None of these are deterred by rationality. Even the effect on rational people is not so clear-cut. The author of the paper cited in Con's R1 [1] that gives the 18 person deterrent effect also wrote another paper, which explained that effect appears to only happen in states where there have been more than 9 executions in the past 20 years.[4] That means most states have 0 effect, as they haven’t executed that many since 1976, let alone in the last 20 years.[5]The DP may be correlated with deterring some murders, but it also correlates with increased in-prison homicide. The vast majority of in-prison murders that occur are in states that have the DP, and inmate assaults on prison staff are overwhelmingly more common in these states as well.[6] Taken together, local jails and state and federal prisons deal with as much as 150 prisoner deaths per year, the vast majority of which take place in states with the DP.[7] This is a small wonder given the mental health problems the DP causes. There is no reason why those lives should be treated as less important.But for those who would avoid it, that is the result of the tortures that come with it, not of the sentence itself. If the only goal is to engender fear, then why not employ more egregious tortures? Con seems fine with the suffering of inmates and their families, destroying their inherent humanity, so long as deterrence may occur.Conclusion:Con has done nothing but provide a by-the-numbers case based solely in utilitarian cost-benefit analysis. On that front, we still outweigh. If the threat of death does deter, LWOP garners some of it as well. Meanwhile, we have explained how the DP has some negative effects on deterrence, how the DP leads to executions and suicides of innocent people, and how the recidivism rate is only held there by the punitive-focused system that the DP upholds. Con cannot solve for this harm. Our side in this debate is the only one that can reduce recidivism, a problem that leads to over 75% of criminals returning to prison for a multitude of crimes. At best, Con's case only marginally reduces the incidence of homicide. We reduce all criminal activity that results from recidivism, including homicide.We have also shown how we’re winning on a basic justice value. Cost-benefit analysis fails to take into account the fact that we're discussing a means for enforcing justice. That's what the DP, LWOP, and other sentences are there for. That's the reason why we consider them as a means for enforcing justice and not just random, brutal violence against offenders, though that would be effective for deterrence – we care about how even convicts are treated. We’ve demonstrated how the current system is incredibly unjust, to the wrongly accused, other inmates, and their families. We've also shown how a shift to rehabilitation can only occur following abolition of the DP, reducing undue suffering during and beyond the limits of incarceration.Vote Con.http://bit.ly...http://bit.ly...http://bit.ly...http://bit.ly...http://bit.ly...http://bit.ly...http://1.usa.gov...