Abolish the Death Penalty

Thank you as well for the chance to debate. I am going to start by replying to some things my opponent has stated. "Is it really right to deny adequate justice to a person who has taken many lives just because it costs a few extra penny's out of our wallets?" Rather than cost pennies to execute criminals today it is more around millions of dollars. For example, I cited before that on average it costs California around 10 times more to simply kill a criminal when compared to incarcerating them for life. California's planned reformation of the death penalty would yet again raise the price to almost double of what it is now to execute someone. As a nation that is 14 trillion dollars in debt and rapidly growing we cannot afford to waste this much funds on simply killing a criminal. Ideally, it should only cost the price of a bullet, gun and an officers time to deal out death penalty cases because it should only be appropriate to use the death penalty when these cases are so cut and dry that there are no need for large amounts of legal fees to determine the truth of the matter. Other states are wasting money too: "A 2003 legislative audit in Kansas found that the estimated cost of a death penalty case was 70% more than the cost of a comparable non-death penalty case. Death penalty case costs were counted through to execution (median cost $1.26 million). Non-death penalty case costs were counted through to the end of incarceration (median cost $740,000). (December 2003 Survey by the Kansas Legislative Post Audit) In Tennessee, death penalty trials cost an average of 48% more than the average cost of trials in which prosecutors seek life imprisonment. (2004 Report from Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury Office of Research) In Maryland death penalty cases cost 3 times more than non-death penalty cases, or $3 million for a single case. (Urban Institute, The Cost of the Death Penalty in Maryland, March 2008) In California the current system costs $137 million per year; it would cost $11.5 million for a system without the death penalty. (California Commission for the Fair Administration of Justice, July 2008)" -http://www.amnestyusa.org... "Contention 1: If a person who has been proven to have murdered another individual. The this also proves that the murderer has silenced that person or persons. Therefore, it is justified to silence the murderer.[2]" I have to agree with my opponent here. It is a just punishment for a murderer to be murdered, but as for his intended reform to bring the death penalty costs back down to nominal fees and (hopefully) only use the death penalty when cases are cut and dry I just do not see how our current government is capable of that feat. We are talking about the same government that has been consistently for raising the costs of the death penalty to ensure "fair practice" but I do not see why it should cost millions of dollars to ensure the right person is being executed because the death penalty should only be used when it is easier to tell who the real criminal is. It is probably not too improbable that some cases are determined by who has the better lawyer instead of the truth of the matter. In conclusion: because of the vast amount of abuse that the death penalty has endured from being practiced when cases are not cut and dry and the cost of performing an execution being raised, I imagine, at least a hundred times more since the founding of our nation, I have to conclude that the power to perform the death penalty should be taken away from the government. Once we have a government that is competent enough to use the death penalty only when the guilt of the criminal is not a matter of question and to not inflate its costs by millions of dollars in the false pursuit for a "fair process" I will agree with my opponent that our nation should have one, but I fear that day is becoming farther and farther away.