The Death Penalty should be legal in the United States

Thanks to Con for a fine debate. 1. Justice demands that the death penalty be legal What is just and who is to decide what is just? I say a contract killer who tells a child he is going to murder the child's parents, and then follows through and does so, deserves to be executed. Con would not say the killer does not deserve execution. The death penalty is the just punishment. The Supreme Court affirmed “the community's belief that certain crimes are themselves so grievous an affront to humanity that the only adequate response may be the penalty of death.” We are debating the death penalty for the most heinous of crimes. Con questioned whether the community really should determine what justice requires. The only alternative to the community making the determination is to have the decision made by a non-democratic elite: a religious leader, an authoritarian government, or a class of people put above democracy in some other way. Our society has strong guarantees of free speech, so that issues are freely debated and democratically resolved. In our society there is no elite more qualified than the people to determine what is just. Support for the death penalty by the general public is 64% in favor and 29% opposed, and support has been stable. Supreme Court decisions have ensured that objective standards and sound procedures be enacted by each state to ensure that the death penalty is reserved for serious offences, and that there are safeguards against wrongful execution. In individual cases, a jury decides if the nature of the crime merits the death penalty under law. 2. Execution saves innocent lives There have been over 14,000 executions since the World War II, most of them before higher safeguards were instituted. Con claims that 27 wrongful executions either have occurred or would have occurred. 17 of those were people on death row freed by The Innocence Project, whom Con insists would surely have been executed, even though they were not. However, even the Innocence Project itself does not support Con's claim. After conviction, there are mandatory appeals within the system as well as third party examination. Those measures work well. Con cites 10 executions listed on an anti-death penalty site. However, Con misreads the site. The site claims that only eight wrongful executions have ever been determined officially, and that the ten cited ought to be looked at for the possibility of wrongful execution. I did not examine the claim of eight executions being officially established, because Con didn't cite it. I have granted that there have probably been a handful of wrongful executions in the past, and perhaps eight of the 14,000 is the right number. Con has not established any. If wrongful conviction were common, there should be, at least, many hundreds. The upper bound, according to Con, is 17 + 10 + 8 = 35. In further arguments, we shall see the rate is dropping. Convicted killers sentenced to life imprisonment have a free pass to kill fellow inmates and guards, because they are already under life sentence. They may also kill outside prison in an escape. No one systematically counts how many deaths are a consequence of life sentences. One site listed 29 deaths of fellow inmates, guards, and escape victims. Con challenged that none were recent, so I found four more with a quick web search. Another 79 deaths followed parole or release. The best numbers available are that there have been eight deaths from wrongful executions, and a minimum of 33 murders by those kept in prison. The prison murders are not systematically counted and could be much higher. Additional lives are saved by deterrence, discussed below. Con claims that increased security of confinement might reduce the free pass deaths. I'll discuss that under costs. 3. False convictions are now extremely unlikely due to modern forensics DNA testing and modern forensics have ensured that there are fewer false convictions, and also that fewer guilty persons escape justice. I think that is undisputed. Con argues that wrongful convictions might still result from police misconduct or non-forensic evidence. It's possible, but the CSI effect reduces that possibility as well. Juries are now more likely to demand forensic evidence than before, so that withholding evidence or using false statements are less likely to succed. Defensive attorneys systematically demand independent forensic examination in capital cases. 4. Justice should not be compromised by a very small risk of error Innocent people are killed at the rate of 30,000 per year in traffic accidents. Eight innocent people have been killed in 60 years by having a death penalty – or if Con is correct it is 35 in 60 years. If we can tolerate 30,000 deaths per year for the sake of convenience in driving, we ought to tolerate fewer than one per year for the sake of justice. Con does not dispute this claim. He argues that justice is not worth the cost of the death penalty; that's a different argument. 5. Justice deters crime I did not claim that that Japan's low crime rate was due to the death penalty. My claim is that a culture of justice deters crime, and that having proportional punishment is essential to a culture of justice. The example of Japan shows that the death penalty is consistent with a civilized just society. Those opposed to the death penalty cite statistics that crimes rates do not depend upon whether a state has or does not have a death penalty. I explained early in the debate why that comparison is invalid. For example, California theoretically has a death penalty, but doesn't enforce it. The cultures vary from state to state depending upon many factors. North Dakota does not have the uraban population of new York, for example. States cannot be compared. What is valid, however, is instituting or revoking the death penalty in a given state. That eliminates the factors of enforcement and cultural disparity. Numerous studies, in the US and worldwide, show that the death penalty is demonstrated to be a substantial deterrent. Murder rates doubled upon removing the death penalty and were halved by instituting it. Con did not dispute the constant-culture studies, but only reference invalid cross-culture comparisons. 6. The death penalty supports plea bargaining Con grants the effectiveness of the death penalty in plea bargaining, but again claims it is not worth the cost. Con. 1. Costs Opponents of the death penalty grossly inflate costs by aassuming the higher costs of maintaining inmates on death row would be reduced to that of mixing convicted murderers in the general prison population. The data for California showed death row to be double the cost for the general maximum security prison costs. They assume that all the costs of litigation are necessary. The costs are not necessary because they include absurd attacks on the system (such as lethal injection drugs requiring FDA approval), the costs depend heavily on the court system (Texas is less expensive than Florida or California), and they assign total costs to a few executions. For example, California litigated over 600 death row cases, but due to the strong agenda of California judges, only 13 executions were carried out. That makes the cost per execution ridiculously high. Con's proposal for preventing free pass killings was higher security, but that is expensive. Death row is about twice,and no-human-contact (supermax) is even higher. Con did not contend my claim that no-human-contact confinement is likely to be ruled cruel and unusual, Additional cost savings derive from plea bargaining lower prosecution cost and freeing up police for other investigations. Deterrence lowers the number of murders to be prosecuted. Cost, justice, and savings of innocent lives all favor the legality of the death penalty.