These United States should retain the Death Penalty for murder.

As per the rules I will offer rebuttals next round. Some of my points are pretty much the opposite of his, so I will leave them as rebuttals next round. Here are the points that I'd like to throw into the debate:1. State should not multiply guiltJesus once argued against the old eye for an eye maxim with his slightly cooler turn the other cheek maxim. Justice isn't about giving them what they gave you (that would make you just as bad) - it's about repairing the harm done. Of course there are people who may appear to be 'beyond repair' - but that doesn't give us the right to kill them. That right simply does not exist. As Ghandi said, an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.This is why doing equal harm is in fact doing greater harm - by killing the killer, you too become a killer. It isn't about what the murderer deserves, it's about doing the right thing ourselves. If we say that what they're doing isn't right, then it isn't right for us either. The role of the justice system is best fulfilled by a value-orientated judiciary, not one that blindly kills killers without consideration for the moral consequences. It is my understanding that the United States' declaration of independance states that life is an unalienable right (the UN Declaration of Human Rights agrees too). I should not be at liberty to kill you, but even if I do, the state should still not be at liberty to kill me, because nobody is at liberty to kill. Otherwise the state itself is guilty.2. Criminals deserve to feel punishmentWhat greater punishment could there be than having to spend every day of your life in a facility designed to fill you with remorse and guilt? As if the trial wasn't enough, you now have to live among cockroaches and serial rapists, eat crappy food and lose all your freedoms. Now compare the alternative. You only have one day to live, you are given a lavish last meal, and an injection that you don't even feel (assuming we're talking about the USA here). It's like being able to let go - an avenue of escape from the guilt and remorse we want criminals to feel.Criminals don't fear death - in cases this serious, they rarely have anything left to live for. A minority even consider it a matter of distinction to be killed, as is evidenced by the small number of death row inmates who request to be killed in particulary inhumane ways. What they fear is the truth about their crimes. That's what we want them to face up to. They can't do that if they're dead. But it's more than that - justice is supposed to be about the interests of the victim, not the state. Say I kill my girlfriend and get sentanced to death. Does it honor my girlfriend that what happened to her also happened to me? No. She would want me to go to jail and face up to the terrible crime I have done.3. InnocentsWhen I commit a crime, the only people who really know what happened (usually) are myself, and possibly the victim (if alive). The police can only guess based on clues. It isn't surprising that they often get it wrong. Usually, the whole truth is never revealed. The problem is that with any other punishment you can correct mistakes the police make. That's called due process - you need to be able to pursue your claim of innocence after conviction, as evidence becomes available. You can't do that if you're dead. So what if the evidence is only available after you're executed? This is particulary relevant in murder cases where the line between murder and manslaughter is very difficult to draw without actually being the killer, and so often just comes down to a war of words between attorneys.Since 1973, 138 people in 26 states have been released from death row after they were found innocent (http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org...). This proves the police get it wrong. Dozens more appear to have been executed innocently (http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org...). We can never know how many were really executed innocently.Even if one person is innocently killed, that's too many. Any other punishment it would be alright to have innocents, but when the state kills not a killer but an innocent person, even just one, then they create guilt and multiply it upon themselves. If I came to your house tomorrow, set up a sham court and convicted you to die before killing you, you would expect me to be punished. But if you replace me with the police, you would expect me to be applauded, so long as some other killers are also killed. Killing killers gives people no right to execute innocents.Since you cannot stop 100% innocent executions, innocents will be executed cruelly and unusually for the crime of doing nothing wrong. I'm pretty sure there's a law against that one too.4. DiscriminationIt is a well-known fact that in the united states, much of the probability of whether you will be convicted depends on how much the judge likes you. Judges discriminate very actively and don't always look at the facts. In the case of death penalty, where a person's life is at stake, this can have disasterous consequences. Check out the findings of two studies here: http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org....It isn't just about ethnicity. Poor people can't afford good lawyers, and so are disproportionally represented. That's not fair.If we are to accept discrimination as a given, then we need to err on the side of caution because innocents will be convicted and killers will walk free anyway. Keeping people incarcerated has exactly the same net effect (removing potentially dangerous people from society) but provides a long-term due process mechanism for overcoming this discrimination, through things like the innocence project and so on.ConclusionOscar Wilde once wrote: "One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishment that the good have inflicted." In many ways that sums up my argument. I concur that murder is really, really bad - but I simply say that if it's bad for me to murder you, it's also bad for the government to murder you. This is bad because you might be innocent, discriminated against, or unremorseful, and because by doing so the state only multiplies guilt rather than creating an oppertunity for the guilt to go away. With this in mind I call upon the United States to join with the EU and UN in their opposition to the death penalty, and await my opponent's argument with excitement.