The death penalty should be legalized

FRAMEWORKI would like to start by offering a policy in this debate, as the proposition side has offered none, and then I shall start by refuting his case and why stating that the status quo is already a sound position. Note that the BoP lies almost entirely on the opposition, as he wants to change the status quo to a pro-capital punishment society.POLICYI will attempt to be as analytical as possible. The opposition proposes we use the death penalty to punish crimes like "murder, kidnapping, genocide, espionage and treason." This is justifiable enough, and hence throughout the debate, we shall use this. Hence, for the sake of this debate, the death penalty shall be used for crimes of "murder (in some cases), kidnapping (in fatal cases), genocide, espionage and treason" and no other crimes whatsoever. Hence we have excluded the death penalty from illicit drug dealers and arsonists etc. BURDEN OF PROOFThe burden of side proposition is to show that (a) the death penalty deters crime, (b) that the death penalty protects society, (c) that the death penalty prevents the criminal from going to be to society and committing another crime, and (c) provide some sense of justice for one. The burden of side opposition is to show that all of the opposition's arguments fail. In doing so, I shall (hopefully) be affirming my final baseline case, which is "that although the death penalty might be theoretically a deterrence, an illogical reality destroys this reliance on theory"REBUTTALS1.) DeterrenceThis deterrence theory falls under attack from many empirical studies. A survey of studies by Lamperti (2010) showed that states without the death penalty consistently had a lower murder rate than those which had the death penalty. The survey included a study done by Dann (1935) that included the analysis of homicide rates in Philadelphia 60 days before and after five very publicized execution. He found that the homicide rates 60 days after the execution was shown to be consistently higher than the 60 days before the executions. This might be a mere matter of correlation-causation, but it is not so as we shall see in the brutalization hypothesis that I would like to present later on. [1] More might be said on this: Zimring (2009) surveyed two control groups, Singapore and Hong Kong (both are socio-economical twins) and found that even Singapore might show that the death penalty actually deters crime, the murder rates in capital punishment (CP) Singapore and no-CP Hong Kong are more or less similar. Hence, Singapore's low crime rates are actually because of the economics of the country, not the death penalty. [2] These studies, coupled with many others, show consistently that the death penalty is ineffective at reducing crime from happening in society. However, this might be counter-intuitive, because the utilitarian defenders of CP assume humans to be rational actors. However, a study by Gupta (2011) shows that the amygdala is very active during decision making, attaching stimuli with the perceived emotional result of an action. [3] This means that huge amounts of emotions are connected with decision-making, hence reducing the effectiveness of RCT (rational choice theory), as the cost-analysis benefits of something might be entirely emotional and irrational.2.) The Moral Argument Side proposition attempts to say that justice is delivered by the death penalty. However, this is objectionable. For it is wholly inconsistent to assert that since one has killed another, a third-party (the state) should intervene and take the life of another. I shall take the demonstration of this in a more logical manner:P1. All who killed should get killed P2. x killed aP3. y has the duty to kill xThe irony in this is the following: in P3, y has the obligation to kill x, but P1 states that all, not some, who kill should be killed-so hence, wouldn't someone have the duty to kill y if y kills x. This obligation goes on ad infinitum. And even if the retributivist logic of the side proposition can be accepted, this is also built upon the fact that everyone has a sound mental and sociology combination. Many murderers are intellectual limited, and have been the victims of racism, child abuse, poverty etc. Steiner (2005) argues that since these factors effect the criminal's action, then shouldn't the family of the criminal take some of the blame for this? We find that all of society is to be blamed, but only the defendant guilty. Hence, on these a priori respects, this argument fails. But I would argue later on that even on a pragmatic basis, this argument also fails. [4] 3.) Protection of Prison InmatesThe opposition argues that the death penalty will stop criminals from killing each other. However, this can almost be done exclusively inside high-security prisons. According to John Connor, the "reality is that the death penalty is not, and never has been, a deterrent. Prison safety depends on proper staffing, equipment, resources and training." Apart from this, prisoners in states with the death penalty in the United States are four times much more likely to be killed in prison than in states without the death penalty. [5,6] The justification for the death penalty in terms of keeping prisons safe are, hence, empirically invalid and ultimately falls.4.) Plea Bargain ArgumentThe opposition's presentation of the argument is slightly misconceptualized. "A plea bargain (also plea agreement, plea deal or copping a plea) is any agreement in a criminal case between the prosecutor and defendant whereby the defendant agrees to plead guilty to a particular charge in return for some concession from the prosecutor." Side proposition has described the phenomenon of confession and cooperation with police, not "plea-bargain." However, this might be refuted on the grounds that te death penalty has been used as a threat for false confessions many times. In 2013, an intellectually disabled man pleaded guilty for a crime that he did not commit-he was sentenced to 21 years. He was told that "[the government is] gonna put you [on] the electric chair." [9] 5.) InhumanitySide-proposition gets into this talk about how we could mitigate the death penalty's brutality by using alternative methods. However, all methods of the death penalty are necessarily painful. The least painful method imagineable, lethal injection, is often very much more painful than other methods. 43% of all lethal injection execution prisoners remained conscious during the injection period, making them experience the horrible and nasty pains of the final life-ending poison. [7] If the proposition says that even if this is so, all forms of ending lives are painful, then we must now introduce the brutalization effect.Some of this was presented in the first rebuttal, but more word should be said on it. Bowers (1980) produced a study that showed that murder rates after New York executions from 1907 to 1963 would have a mean increase of two to three in the 4-12 months directly after the executions. [8] These studies are also consistent with the study conducted by Dann (1935), which showed that murder rates would often increase after very highly publicized executions. [1] This is ultimately due to the fact that when a state kills executes a man, it is henceforth seen (in a criminal's mind) that killing is perfectably acceptable, as the state is supposed to be a moral third party which delivers justice. CONSTRUCTIVES1.) InnocenceA study released by Gross (2014) showed that at least 4.1% of all those who have been executed are innocent, or was either held guilty on doubtable evidence. [10] A study released by the same author (2005) showed huge increase in exonerations of those who were guilty for murder from 2000 to 2003 (as seen in Figure I below)-under the proposition's policy, these innocent lives would have been executed. [11] History is not free from cases of miscarriages of justice. In Taiwan, a military court recently exonerated Ching Kuo-Ching, a Taiwanese AF private who was accused of a rape of a 5 year-old girl. In reports, Ching wrote to his parents to say that he was tortured into making his confession. He was executed in 1997 after undergoing 37 hours of intense questioning by air force intelligence services. [12] Ultimately, the justice system cannot be considered a justice system when it is executed innocent prisoners in a hapless and valueluess practice called capital punishment. CONCLUSIONThe opposition's case has been mostly refuted upon moral, empirical and logical grounds. The death penalty has been showed to not have any deterrence effect whatsoever in many cases, and apart from this, the death penalty kills innocent people in the name of "justice." Ultimately, studies that show that the death penalty deters are inconclusive, and the death penalty actually makes society a more dangerous place for people to live in. We must hence reject the death penalty on these grounds, and hold that the death penalty is an obsolete form of punishment that must not be "legalized" in any form or manner whatsoever. The resolution is negated!CITATIONS:[1] https://www.dartmouth.edu...[2] http://papers.ssrn.com...[3] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...[4] http://papers.ssrn.com...[5] https://death.rdsecure.org...[6] http://ejusa.org...[7] http://www.chron.com...[8] https://www.ncjrs.gov...[9] http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org...[10] http://www.pnas.org...[11] http://papers.ssrn.com...[12] http://www.executedtoday.com...