Resolved: Criminals convicted of violent crime should be executed

Death penalty is killing innocent peopleAfter reading Pro's source #2 as proposed, I extend my point that innocent people are killed by death penalty today and many more would be killed by accepting the proposal. This very source details that on most of the exonerations, DNA did not play any role at all, so there is no reason to believe that the numbers of false convictions has changed in the last 10 years. [1] shows that the number is even vastly understated by cases that are never corrected. It concludes that the real number of false convictions is 4.1%.More guilty people would be allowed to go freeGiven those high numbers of false convictions, it is even more understandable that judges are much less likely to hand out death sentences as compared to lifetime sentences.[2] concludes that "One set of studies proposes that the decisions people make maybe affected by the severity of the potential consequences, in general, (Beck, 1984) andspecifically in criminal cases (Kerr, 1993). It follows that the extraordinarily high stakes of thedeath penalty would reduce the frequency of guilty verdicts in capital cases. Survey research hasfound, in fact, that even among proponents of the death penalty, a large majority responded thatthey would need more evidence to vote guilty if the penalty were going to be death than if itwere going to be life imprisonment (Ellsworth & Ross, 1983)."Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg says "People who are well represented at trial do not get the death penalty. I have yet to see a death case among the dozens coming to the Supreme Court on eve-of-execution stay applications in which the defendant was well represented at trial.” [3]It is obvious that the proposed system is different from the current system. However that does not automatically invalidate all statistics and conclusions we can draw from the current system. The observation that the likelihood of convictions decreases as the punishment increases is universally valid. Even in current law systems (e.g. in Florida) judges are practically forced to decide on death penalty vs. freedom as only the verdict phase requires an unanimous vote while the punishment phase is majority based. Therefore the only way to effectively avoid death penalty for a judge is to vote "not guilty" which, as the sources show, some of them are doing.Death penalty does not reduce crime ratesI extend my point that a huge part of violent crimes are passionate crimes for which deterrents do not work. Therefore, the potential effect of death penalty as a deterrent is very limited.Pro's statement "I'm not too sure what you're saying regarding the rapist killing the victim afterwards. If you mean the rapist can have fun killing the person, then that's usually just not the case. I can't find a single thing that currently shows rapists also killing their victims to be "normal." Usually rapists are strictly performing the act for power/sexual reasons." shows that he completely missed my point. I will explain that some more:Imagine a man raping a woman in a passionate affection. When he finally comes to senses again and realizes what he has dome and what the potential consequences are he decides between two options: running away or killing her. If he runs away, she would report the crime and a phantom picture of him would be all over the media the next days. Also she would be able to identify him and the police will secure any DNA evidence he might have left. The chances of being caught are pretty high and the penalty is clearly death penalty. If he kills her, burns the body, and buries the remains somewhere the situation is different: She will not report the crime, she will not be able to identify him and any DNA material will most likely be destroyed. It is unlikely that the crime will ever be detected and even more unlikely that it will be connected to him. Thereby, he clearly reduces the odds of being caught and the cost of that is nothing. Right, if the gets caught he will still get the same penalty as before and not face any additional penalty for that murder.This example can be extended to a lot of cases: Been seen while robbing a gas station? Kill the witness! Beat your wife and she want to go to the police? Better kill her and blame it on an anonymous murderer!Death penalty is condemned by the international communityMy main point here is that the realization of the proposal would significantly affect foreign relations which in turn will also negatively affect the economy. This effect cannot be ignored as neither Canada nor the US are isolated countries; both heavily rely on foreign relations.Extended death row period is neededI must thank Pro for clearly stating the idea as follows so I can grasp its full impact: "When the judge makes the final ruling, the chance of the person being innocent is so low that, like I said before, it's worth the sacrifice, to make the country a better place."What Pro actually proposes is a threat-based legal system (in contrast to one based on justice). Suspects should be killed based on the probability that they pose a threat to society. The proposal even abolishes any possibility of appealing to higher courts thus the proposed system will have a high false-positive rate.Pro openly admits that this will cost the lives of innocent people but argues that the expected decrease in crime rate is worth it.Consequently, by the same utilitarian logic, this threat-based approach could be extended to people that are highly likely to commit a crime in the future like drug addicts, homeless, and people with mental issues. Pro's savings argument also supports those target groups as they normally are not paying much tax but are a burden to social security and welfare.Re: Money saved in deathMacro-economics show that public spending is much unlike private spending. While I consider Pro's figures to be overstated, I will not contest them for the sake of the debate. Those numbers however do not include the public savings by people in prison. Yes right, people in prison also save money as they are not using several public services while in prison.Also, I strongly reject to view the costs of prisons as losses. Pro himself gave the following example for prison spending: employee wages. This is a perfect example on how the money will return to the state. Part of the spending will directly return in income tax. As employees spend their salary, most of the money will come back as sales tax, corporate tax and again income tax of the employees of those companies. This means that most of the money actually returns to the state. And as a nice byproduct lots of jobs are created for people that otherwise would have to be supported by public welfare.So just saving money by killing people is not feasible, the math just doesn't work.Statistics show that prison populations are mostly made up of men and most of them are between 20 and 50. This means that they would make up a perfect work force were they not in prison. While Pro's proposal is to remove them from society and therefore erase their potential work force from the GDP, my proposal is to use their work force to contribute to GDP (as much as possible being in prison).Re: No more re-offendersThe reason for me to dismiss this point so quickly was that one could achieve the same result with lifetime sentences. My line of reasoning to dismiss this argument was that when two options can achieve the same goal then always the option that costs less lives must be chosen. This can be seen as some kind of Occam's Razor of morals.I hope that Pro agrees with this concept that I consider to be fundamental to our society. Any further objections that consider other differences of the two options (like the costs) already have separate points so this point should be dropped.Re: Crime-free futureI have to dismiss the example given by Pro as it is only anecdotal and thus cannot tell us anything about a whole society. Also, bringing up this example clearly violates the debate rules as it concerns the situation in the UK.Murder by false accusationAnother interesting point is that such a legal system that applies death penalty for a broad variety of crimes and does not allow any way to challenge a verdict can be abused: Murder by false accusation. People could accuse other people of crimes they did not commit and let the state carry out the actual killing for them. Con's proposal offers "sexual assault", "domestic violence", "stalking/threatening with intent to harm", and "any form of physical assault" as options to chose from. It is not very hard to see that it is very easy to make up false accusations including false evidence in those categories that are hard to disprove.As consequence, the rate of false convictions would rise dramatically. This in turn will raise even more doubt among judges and result in even more guilty people go free. This could finally lead to the collapse of the legal system as a whole.[1]: http://www.pnas.org...[2]: https://gspp.berkeley.edu...[3]: https://verdict.justia.com...