capital punishment should be banned

I appreciate your argument and after some research here are some of my points . 1) Cost - My worthy opponent has mentioned it is more cost effective to give life imprisonment than death penalty . But consider the following example "Both Central government of India and Maharashtra governments have spent around Rs. 29.5 crores on Ajmal Kasab to provide him food, security, medicines and clothes during his confinement in Arthur Road Central prison in Mumbai, official sources said on Wednesday. Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) deployed around 250 guards for Kasab in the prison since his arrest in November 2008 till October 2012 and expenditure on this count worked out to Rs. 26 crore, sources said. Maharashtra government spent around Rs. 3.47 crores on Kasab including food (Rs. 42,313), security (Rs. 1, 46,81,794), medicines (Rs. 39,829) and clothes (Rs. 1,878). The state government also incurred an expenditure of Rs. 2 crores on building a bullet and bomb proof cell especially for Kasab in the Central Prison at Arthur Road. The cell was connected to the specially made court (also bomb and bullet proof) by a tunnel which was fortified with iron walls and ceiling to ward off any terrorist strike with bombs." At first it was decided that this terrorist would not be given death penalty. But due to so much of expenditure on him , the court finally gave orders for his execution. So one can imagine that how much capital would have been wasted on this one man if he was given life imprisonment. If criminals like Kasab are allowed to stay in jail with others then he would have also caused harm to other inmates. So one should first think about the security of the people( although they are prisoners) before thinking about the cost. 2) Innocent or guilty- Capital punishment is not given abruptly to a person who is just suspected of committing a crime. It is a long process and each case of death penalty comes before the court at least three times and a death row usually lasts averagely for ten years. So it is well planned and is done after a lot of screening. The percentage of making mistakes in this lengthy process is very low. While giving exams we do have a fear of making mistakes but we still give our examinations right? Similarly only due to the fear of making mistakes in judgement one cannot not just do away with the whole system. 3) Racial bias- well this is a thing which had never crossed my mind while writing this debate. The country in which I live in doesn't have this problem . But yes, there is a distinction between rich and poor as richer people can always hire better lawyers, but the judgement of our supreme court is accepted by everybody as final. The Supreme court of our country is an independent body which is not at all under the influence of the president. But as this problem is prevalent in American and European countries I would like to say that death penalty is like a knife. You can use it to either cut vegetables or kill people. It really depends on your hand. Racial bias doesn't only affect the judgements of death penalty but everything. So one needs to get rid of racial bias not death penalty 4) Deterrence- Some examples that capital punishment does work well as a deterrent. 1: In 1973 Isaac Ehrlich employed a new kind of analysis which produced results showing that for every inmate who was executed, 7 lives were spared because others were deterred from committing murder. Similar results have been produced by disciples of Ehrlich in follow-up studies 2: Ernest van den Haag, a Professor of Jurisprudence at Fordham University who has studied the question of deterrence closely, wrote: "Even though statistical demonstrations are not conclusive, and perhaps cannot be, capital punishment is likely to deter more than other punishments because people fear death more than anything else. They fear most death deliberately inflicted by law and scheduled by the courts. Whatever people fear most is likely to deter most. Hence, the threat of the death penalty may deter some murderers who otherwise might not have been deterred. And surely the death penalty is the only penalty that could deter prisoners already serving a life sentence and tempted to kill a guard, or offenders about to be arrested and facing a life sentence. Perhaps they will not be deterred. But they would certainly not be deterred by anything else. We owe all the protection we can give to law enforcers exposed to special risks." 3:A 2003 study he co-authored, and a 2006 study that re-examined the data, found that each execution results in five fewer homicides, and commuting a death sentence means five more homicides. " 4: Each execution deters an average of 18 murders, according to a 2003 nationwide study by professors at Emory University. (Other studies have estimated the deterred murders per execution at three, five and 14). 5: For every 2.75 years cut from time spent on death row, one murder would be prevented, according to a 2004 study by an Emory University professor. So I conclude by saying that death penalty is indeed effective against murderers committing heinous crimes. citations [1]http://www.thehindu.com... [2]http://www.washingtonpost.com... [3]http://deathpenaltycurriculum.org...