Capital Punishment

A-1) Death Penalty is JustCon continued to attack my source, he said my source is out of date and dismissed everything. Since he made the "outdated" claim many times, I will address it once and for all. Outdated means old and no longer valid. If you want to claim something is outdated you must show why it is invalid first. Con made a baseless claim "it is outdated" first and then concluded "it is invalid". This kind or reasoning is false.Then Con accused Dudley Sharp of being biased. But does the quote Con cited proves that Sharp is indeed biased, or was he simply stating the conclusion he got from his research? It could mean either way. Until Con has concrete evidence, I would like him to stop such baseless accusation.Con claimed that my arguments is subjective, and dismissed them entirely. This claim of his is totally baseless too. I said that denying someone a painless death and making him suffer something worse than death is torture. Therefore if LWOP is worse than death like Con said, it is "cruel and unusual, immoral and unconstitutional". There is nothing wrong with this line of reasoning. If Con thinks it is subjective, please elaborate why. Otherwise his claim is invalid.A-2) Death Penalty deters crimesa/ The report of The National Research CouncilCon claimed that because the National Research Council also reviewed the studies I cited, so it alone can outweigh seventeen. It is false. The National Research Council made a standard and they judged that those studies don't meet their standard. However, is their standard completely right and their judgment absolute? Obviously not, they are just one among many. It is illogical to think that one single review can deny all other studies like that.b/ 88% of the nation's criminologists believe that the death penalty does not deter crimeCon accused me of committing the fallacy too, but it is not true.- From my source, we have a fact that 99.9% of the convicted capital murderers argue for life, not death. From that fact, I have a logical deduction that criminals fear death most. There is no fallacy.- From his source, we have a fact that 88% of the criminologists asked in a survey believe that the death penalty does not deter crime. From that fact, Con deduced that the death penalty does not deter crime, which I have proven to be fallacious in Round 3.Con ignored my point entirely and attempted to discredit it by claiming that I did the same thing. In short, he committed another fallacy. [1]c/ States without the death penalty have lower rates of homicide than states with the penaltyCon has dropped the argument, it means that he has conceded this point.d/ Correlation & CausationCon presented a new argument: He said my sources only shows correlation, not causation, and discarded them. However, while correlation doesn't necessarily mean causation, dismissing correlation entirely as if it does not suggest causation is wrong as well. Also, multiple independent correlations can point reliably to a causation, and is a reasonable line of argument. [2]Con demanded the evidence to prove causation. But the fact is: It's impossible to prove causation directly. We can only infer causation using statistics. It is not perfect but that's all what we got. The studies I cited above use statistics to get the conclusion that the death penalty deters crime. That conclusion is not the absolute truth, but it is as close as it can.R-1) EconomyAs I've said in Round 3, Con dropped the argument, therefore he has conceded this point. Whether he could refute my claim is irrelevant. He has the BOP to prove his claim. If the BOP is not met, then he will lose, even if I can't prove my claim.He didn't even refute my claim properly. His main "rebuttal" is still the "outdated source" attack. Other than that, he mentioned my question but conveniently forgot to answer it. He mentioned there is someone questioning the cost calculation, but conveniently ignored the answer right after that. It stated that the cost of the death penalty was exaggerated and many cost reductions were ignored, in fact the actual cost of the death penalty is even lower. Therfore his claim that my source contradicts itself is false.Anyway, Con claimed that the annual cost increase estimated in 1994 (which is 2%) is incorrect. Actually he is right, but not in the way he wants. In 1997 the average cost for one adult inmate in California is roughly $25,000/year [3], in 2008 it is around $50,000/year. [4] The cost increased 100% in ten years. So the actual cost increase is much higher than estimation. Therefore, the cost for LWOP is much more expensive. My argument stands.R-2) SocietyCon insisted that because the statistics emphasis on the death penalty, therefore the death penalty must be the cause, everything else is irrelevant. It is a grave mistake. The statistics that only include information about the death penalty can't prove that. If you want to prove factor X cause result Y, you must compare the situations when with X and when without X. In order to prove his point, at least Con has to show that in non captial punishment cases, the blacks and the whites are equal, the mentally ill people are not punished. Con claimed that "the death penalty influences the mindset of the juror to vote one way or the other", while what is stated in his source is "race of the victim was found to influence the likelihood of being charged with capital murder or receiving the death penalty". They are fundamentally different.Regarding my second point, one more time, Con ignored my arguments entirely and used his "outdated source" attack. Con also said "The source states that it rebuts several sources which claim the opposite, which it actually does not and simply states that the ratios and percentages are off, which are ineffective rebuttals". This is irrelevant. I used the Sharp's numbers, not his arguments. Even if Sharp's conclusion is wrong, it has nothing to do with mine. What Con has done here is presenting an unrelated issue in order to discredit my source, and discarded my point.Regarding the appeal process, again, Con attacked my source and ignored my points. In the article of Berkeley blog, Jonathan Simon, a professor of law, explained why convicts sentenced to death actually have better chance to get out of prison. He was explaining the laws. Why does he need statistics or analysis? Again, Con raised completely unrelated issues to discredit my source.R-3) MoralityCon argued that because we can't punish criminals with exactly what they did, so we can't put murderers to death. However, this deduction is false because those two things are fundamentally different. The former means that the crime preceded the punishment, the punishment is made to be similar to the crime. The latter means the penalty already exists, the criminal just happens to do the same thing. There is nothing wrong if the punishment and the crime happen to be the same, as I've proved with the example that we can lock up criminals who lock up people (which was accused to be a straw man by Con).Regarding McVeigh, again, Con talked as if McVeigh's logic existed first and we imitated him. It is false. I already said in the previous Round that it is McVeigh who used our logic in a twisted way (which got ignored by Con). Just because someone uses a reasoning in the wrong way, doesn't mean that reasoning is wrong. Con ignored my point by using the accusation that I made a fallacy. He also ignored my explanation why it is not a fallacy. This is absurd. If you want to accuse someone of something, you have BOP to show that your accusation is right and you must let the other person defend himself. Otherwise, your accusation is invalid.[1] http://www.fallacyfiles.org...[2] http://celebrationofreason.com...[3] http://www.bsa.ca.gov...[4] http://www.bsa.ca.gov...