Resolved: The death penalty should be banned in the United States.

In her first contention, my opponent talks about how the death penalty is more expensive that life in prison. However, according to the International Herald Tribune, when the costs of keeping an inmate in prison per year are added up, the death penalty is easily cheaper. The Reuters foundation reported in March of 2009 that on average, it cost $29,000 to keep one inmate into jail, so if a criminal committed a murder when they were 25, and they stayed in jail until they were 85, the cost of housing them would be almost $2 million. The average cost of one death case row, however, is $285,000. That's a clear benefit monetary wise of the death penalty. However, the cost of the death penalty isn't a reason to vote affirmative. The costs are irrelevant compared to the closure that it gives to the victims. Just because something is expensive doesn't mean that we shouldn't do it, it just means that it costs a lot of money. Unless my opponent can prove that the cost of the death penalty directly harms something, then the negative team easily wins this issue. My opponent later says that the money should be going to prisons to improve the quality of life of the criminals there, but it makes no sense why the US government should be spending money to help out criminals instead of victims. It's illogical for the US to stop using the death penalty because it's "expensive" and instead use all that money to improve the quality of life for inmates. The inmates are there because they've done something wrong, in a lot of cases, committed murder. The money of taxpayers, and of the families of the victims shouldn't be going to make their life better. Now moving on to my opponent's second contention, she talks about how mistakes in prosecution cause people to be put to death for no reason. She then tries to prove this through a Columbia University study, which found errors in cases in the late 1900s. However, this was more than 20 years ago Science has come a long way since then, and the mistakes that were being made then aren't being made now. Unless my opponent can prove that today, a significant amount of innocents are still being executed, the negative team clearly wins this issue. Furthermore, the study is flawed. The error rate produced by the study included any issue requiring further review by a lower court, even when the court upheld the sentence. The study never actually found any case of mistaken executions, so its clear that the murder of innocents isn't an issue in today's round. Finally, looking at my opponent's third contention, she talks about how the death penalty doesn't deter crime. However, her only evidence to back this up is a quote by one member of Colombia University, which really isn't enough to prove what she's saying. Remember that in Harris County, after the death penalty was reinstated, the murder rate dropped by 73%, and that because Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana account for nearly half of the nation's executions, they also have the steepest decline in homicide rates. Furthermore, according to the University of North Carolina, for every 1 execution, 18 murders were deterred. The death penalty was worked empirically in history to deter murders, therefore the negative team wins the deterrence issue. Furthermore, even if the deterrence provided by the death penalty isn't as high as some people may like it to be, the fact remains that it still does more than putting a criminal in life would. Because the resolution talks about banning the death penalty, we have to compare things now to what things would look like without the death penalty. Without capital punishment, there would be no deterrence at all against criminals, therefore it's still a better deterrent than life in prison is. Now moving on to my case, for my first contention about the death penalty being a deterrent, my opponent says that because 88% of criminologists don't believe that it is a deterrent, it isn't. However, when we actually look at past examples in history of the death penalty being banned, we see that the murder rate shoots up, and when it gets reinstated, the murder rate goes down. We can see this in the states of Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma, where almost half of all US executions are committed, and also have the sharpest decline in homicide rates. Also, in response to my University of North Carolina study which stated that for every 1 execution, 18 murders were prevented, my opponent says that people often question studies. However, that is irrelevant to the University of North Carolina study. Unless my opponent can actually prove that the methodology of that study is flawed, not just that some studies have flawed methodologies, she can't win on this point. Just because some studies have flawed methods doesn't mean that every study does, therefore she has to look at this study in particular. For my second contention about how the American people want it, my opponent's response is that my poll is false, and how a CNN poll says that when another option is given, only 46% of Americans support it. I'd like to clarify that we're talking about two different polls. The poll I stated in my case comes from the Gallup Polling Center, and the question specifically asked whether Americans support the death penalty for murderers. 69% of Americans said yes, so its clear that Americans do support the death penalty. The judge should prefer the poll in my case, since it was more recent than the ABC poll, and it's from a more legitimate polling source. Furthermore, my opponent misconstrues the ABC study. What the study actually says, is that when another choice of punishment is given, 46% prefer life in prison, while 50% prefer capital punishment. Her own study proves that people that don't want the death penalty is a minority, therefore it's clear that this point goes to the negative team. Finally, for my third contention, my opponent states that the death penalty doesn't provide closure because it doesn't bring the family member back. However, that's not the goal of the death penalty. The point of capital punishment is to deter against crime, and give families a sense of peace by knowing that they won't have to worry about their loved one's murderer again. Capital punishment puts victims first by giving them closure, while life sentences put the criminal first. My opponent then goes on to say that because countries like China and the EU have abolished the death penalty, then we should too. First of all, China still uses the death penalty. Their last execution was less than 3 months ago, and capital punishment still hasn't been banned, so if my opponent's goal is to do what China's doing, that just proves why we should be using the death penalty. Furthermore, just because the EU doesn't use capital punishment does not mean that the US shouldn't either. Unless my opponent can prove that the families of victims in the EU are fine with letting their loved one's killer stay alive, the fact that the EU doesn't use capital punishment is irrelevant to today's debate. Throughout this whole round, my opponent has been looking at things in the viewpoint of the criminals. What banning the death penalty does is tell criminals that it's okay to kill citizens and destroy families, since we will protect them from death, and tell the families of victims that frankly, we don't care about what they're going through, we're only concerned about the criminals. That's what's actually barbaric, not the death penalty. Therefore I can see no other option but a negative ballot.