The prohibition of the death penalty.

Contention 1: Irreversible Mistakes His 1st response: Chance of killing negligible because of technology advances. Issue: Technology doesn’t convict people of crimes; a jury of peers takes care of that. They accomplish this by hearing the evidence and seeing the evidence, and then are persuaded by attorneys on both sides. However, with many cases, people cannot afford the best lawyers and are sometimes stuck with lawyers who are incompetent and not very well equipped. This causes them to be at a severe disadvantage if they are innocent, because the lawyer will sound inferior to the DA and the jury will vote for the state. 2nd response: Mostly Speculation on the innocent killings and people were still seen as guilty after appeals. Issue: For starters, the object of my “possibility of innocent killing argument” was to demonstrate that if so many people were later found innocent and only so many people are on death row, it increases the possibility that at least one person executed now, or possibly in the future can be an innocent party. This means that the death row system would be liable and wrong in executing an innocent person. Turn 1: Recidivism and 1.2% of murderers commit a murder again Issue: This is close to 1 out of every 100 murderers, commits another killing. The problem with this evidence is it does not limit the findings to those who are facing 1st degree murder charges. What this means is that the 1.2% could have been from people committing 2nd and 3rd degree murders, which are not offenses punishable by lethal injection or any form of death penalty.[1] Furthermore, the source provided only states “homicide” meaning, all people in jail whether for manslaughter or premeditated murder must be executed. So if someone is in an involuntary manslaughter accident, they must be killed by the state. So even if someone was killed in a car accident, this person must be executed. On the “AND”, those 87 murders could’ve been by anyone, such as a person serving 5 years on a drug charge, which actually makes this argument/turn an advantage for Pro on the cost contention. When people are released from jail they are given a check of 75.00$ or less and sent on their way. They are less likely to be hired at a felon unemployment rate of 75% their first year out [2]. The lack of social status and hardships outside the jail, lead to the recidivism Con talks about. Turn 2: Deterrence. Issue: As a Richmond study shows [3], the link between murder rates dropping and the death penalty is not statistically significant. Likewise, states who execute more people through the death penalty don’t have lower rates of murderous crimes, which show the death penalty is not a sufficient deterrent. Contention 2: Costs His 1st response: Who cares? We shouldn’t sacrifice ethical responsibility for sake of saving. Issue: With this being said, there is no possible way of saying it is the state’s ethical responsibility to murder someone because they have done the same. It is morally and ethically wrong on both sides of this account 2nd response: No link between officer layoffs and money. Issue: Since money and budget cuts are the cause of officer layoffs and using the death penalty is very costly to the state and justice fun, these two distinctly link to one another. A study by Professors show that the cost to implement the death penalty in NY would be able to fund 250 officers and house 6000 inmates[4]. This answers the third response as well. 3rd response: No link between release and death penalty I have misquoted in the first argument and left out a portion of the quoted area. “In Florida a mid-year budget cut of 45 million…forced the release of 3000 inmates. [4] Contention 3: Weak Form of Justice Response: Justice wouldn’t be served if criminal given right over victim with no death penalty, because favor would be toward criminal. Issue: If state as the right to mandate who lies and who dies, it abuses its power because after the execution, it has been given sole power of right to live over the killer of the victim. This is giving the states right to kill through vengeance which is unjustified. Contention 4: Unalienable rights Turn 1: All punishments become void because of right to liberty. Issue: Prisoners do have liberty just within a confined area. They have the liberty to any religion, to say as they please, to do whatever they want to do as long as it coincides with the rules of the prison, the rules the prison has set for the particular criminal, and doesn't violate the rights of other prisoners. This must be accepted as the right to liberty has not been alienated, because the right to mental liberty has not been taken away, and the Declaration doesn't specify whether liberty is mental or physical. Turn 2: Locke’s philosophy Issue: Not a sufficient turn as Locke’s philosophy may have been observed, but he didn’t draft the declaration, Jefferson did. Whether he believed in the penalty or not is nullified in this debate, because you can take a philosophy and alter it to fit your beliefs. Retributivism: If someone kills it is understood that their right to life is not there as they have acted on the idea that their right to life doesn’t exist. Issue: This is a flawed concept on the basis of right to life.” For Jefferson, as for some other political philosophers of this period, the idea that governments should have the power to deprive persons of all of their natural rights would have been abhorrent – the perfect recipe for tyranny. Governments could not legitimately claim such a power unless the people had explicitly granted it by their free consent but any people who did so would be foolhardy beyond belief, or would in fact attempt to do what it could not do, namely attempt to renounce or alienate rights which they could not in fact divest themselves of.”[5]Sources will be provided in the comments, as the second comment.