The Death Penalty should be legal in the United States

I appreciate Con's vigorous debate. 1+. Justice demands that the death penalty be legal How do we know what is just? I claim that a contract killer who tells a child he is going to murder the child's parents, and then follows through and does so, deserves to be executed. Con claims that it only seems that killer deserves to be executed, but maybe he should not. There are individuals who refuse to convict any person of any crime, and say so. People who refuse to convict anyone are excused from jury duty. The society as a whole should decide the parameters of justice. “Gallup's annual Crime Survey finds that 64% of Americans continue to support the use of the death penalty for persons convicted of murder, while 29% oppose it -- continuing a trend that has shown little change over the last seven years.” [11. http://www.gallup.com... ] That is why a death penalty should be legal. Whether it is just in a particular case is the job of a jury to decide within the laws democratically established. The jury's options are heavily constrained to prevent arbitrary use of the death penalty. That was instituted by a series of Supreme court decisions. [12. http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org... ] As now constituted, the death penalty is judged by the Court to have the necessary safeguards. Con claims that the death penalty is “more barbaric” than life in prison without possibility of parole. I disagree. Barbaric implies unduly harsh. A just penalty is not unduly harsh. It is civilized. " Indeed, the decision that capital punishment may be the appropriate sanction in extreme cases is an expression of the community's belief that certain crimes are themselves so grievous an affront to humanity that the only adequate response may be the penalty of death. " ~ Supreme Court of the United States of America [13. http://www.prodeathpenalty.com...] 2+. Execution saves innocent lives Con argues that 17 cases of people freed from death row as a result of scrutiny should be somehow counted as wrongly executed. Even The Innocence Project does not make that claim. They were not executed at all, for the reason that extra scrutiny is applied, both by the court system and by independent concerned citizens. I grant that there have probably been a handful of wrongful executions among the 14,000 carried out post-War, but it is telling that so far Con has not cited any, despite his implication that they are common. Regarding murders committed by those given life as an alternative to execution, I agree it is possible to hold prisoners in effective supermax confinement. There are three problems with that: Supermax confinement is extremely expensive. It is much more expensive than ordinary “maximum” security. [14. http://solitarywatch.com... ] The cost savings claimed for abolishing the death penalty are obtained by mixing inmates in the general population. “ Supermax won't be used because it is too expensive, and because judges will further downgrade sentences. Supermax solitary confinement is likely to be ruled cruel and unusual punishment. [15. http://solitarywatch.com... ] If it is not, it should be. I am saying that the death penalty is not (the supreme Court has already so ruled), but that denying human contact is. Society should not keep people alive and then make them suffer for their whole lives. So long as large numbers of inmates are given a free pass to kill fellow inmates guards, and victims during escapes, it will cost innocent lives. 3+. False convictions are now extremely unlikely due to modern forensics Challenged to provide examples of wrongful executions, Con point to a list of ten cases. However, none of the ten were found to be wrongful executions. The anti-death-penalty site that lists them only claims that they ought to be given a close look. The site presents a one-sided account of each case, and then implies that the courts that reviewed the cases were incompetent to judge. In addition none of the death penalty verdicts in the ten cases were rendered after the onset of the CSI effect, with accompanying heighten jury awareness of the importance of forensic evidence. One of the executions was in 2000 and one in 2004, but the cases were old. In the last round, Con added a case of a person found innocent and freed before execution. That is a consequence of extra scrutiny. 4+. Justice should not be compromised by a very small risk of error Con argues, “I do not see whatever death prevention my opponent claims being worth spending millions of extra taxpayer's dollars.” The public gets to make that decision, and two-thirds are pro death penalty. Even more money could be saved by having prompt executions without the lengthy appeals and extra expense of having death row inmates in expensive high-security confinement. If cCon's argument is true, it favors the death penalty on an expedited basis. 5+. Justice deters crime Con agrees, “A culture can lower crime rates if its people follow strict moral guidelines.” I think moral guidelines cannot be strict if punishment is not appropriate to the crime. Japan shows that a civil and moral society uses the death penalty when it is the appropriate punishment. One method that avoids cross-culure analysis is to examine what happens when the death penalty is removed or instituted in a society. “ Statistics were kept for the 5 years that capital punishment was suspended in Britain (1965-1969) and these showed a 125% rise in murders that would have attracted a death sentence. … Various recent academic studies in the USA have shown that capital punishment is a deterrent there.” [16. http://www.capitalpunishmentuk.org... ] “ the Texas murder rate ...had fallen to 6.1 -- a drop of 60 percent [with the death penalty]. ... the most aggressive death penalty prosecutions are in Harris County [where] the annual number of ... murders has plummeted from ... -- a 72 percent decrease.” [17. http://debatepedia.idebate.org...] When the Supreme court issued a moratorium on the death penalty from 1972-76, homicide rate rose dramatically. “The murder rate -- homicides per 100,000 persons -- doubled from 5.1 to 10.2. So the number of murders grew as the number of executions shrank.” [17] The savings in human life includes the killings by convicts give a free pass, and those deterred. The numbers are very large compared to the vanishingly small numbers of wrongful executions. 6+. The death penalty supports plea bargaining I never argued that justice demands that the death penalty always be applied. Judges, prosecutors, and juries all have a say in when it is appropriate. Plea bargaining can be appropriate in some circumstances, and I gave examples. Con asserts without proof that the results of plea bargaining, such as the Green River killer's many murders, might have been accomplished by “other means.” I maintain that the incentive provided by execution is unmatched. 1-. The death penalty is extremely expensive to implement Con's main argument so far is cost. He just argued that not matter how many innocent lives are saved, it isn't worth the expense to the taxpayer. Con did not dispute my cost analysis with data, but relied upon an anti-death-penalty site to opine that the costs were just due to "execution." Cost analysis by the Florida Senate showed the costs strictly associated with the death penalty were a small fraction of that claimed, and could be further reduced by adopting methods used in Texas. [18. http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org...] There are additional savings from deterrence.