On balance, Death Penalty as a punishment has a negative impact on the society

I thank Con for his timely argument. And I hope the atrocious formatting doesn't take away from the content of the arguments. Pardon my technological incompetence. Rebuttals: Guilty can’t ever kill again: Con argued that Capital Punishment helps society by preventing the guilty by ever killing again. A person punished with life imprisonment without parole cannot either, by the same logic. In a state without death penalty as a legitimate punishment, LWOP is the obvious substitute. A person who was granted life imprisonment without parole even when there was a possibility of death penalty would probably be given the same punishment when there’d no possibility of the same. Unless Con is arguing the death penalties should be given out more rigorously (which would lead to an increase in innocent being convicted, as an obvious unintended consequence), this doesn’t really give any support to death penalty argument.Con supports his contention using examples. However, it should be noted that murderers have the lowest rate of recidivism. In fact, just 1.2% of those who had served time for homicide were arrested for homicide again. Compare that to recidivism rate among robbers (70.2%), burglars (74.0%), larcenists (74.6%), motor vehicle thieves (78.8%), those in prison for possessing or selling stolen property (77.4%), and those in prison for possessing, using, or selling illegal weapons (70.2%). Even rapists have a higher rate of recidivism at 2.5%. [1] Thus it is fair to assume that the decision mechanism used by the government to ensure that a murderer is granted parole/ limited time imprisonment is working. The risk the society faces has been overweighed by a few high profile sensationalist cases. Another point my opponent brings up is the failures of security system. Although the problem of security failure is more of an externality than a norm, there are two points to be noted here: a) A person on a death penalty row would be more desperate to exploit these security failures, given that men intrinsically fear death more. And they have less to lose. Abolition of death penalty, then, would actually be useful here. However, even people on life sentence, if have the capability to exploit these failures, wouldn’t really be averse to use them. The inherent solution here is to improve the security; this doesn’t really say anything about the kind of sentence laid out. b) A person who has been given the ultimate verdict of death penalty still has years to go before the ultimate execution. Prisoners have to wait years before the final execution takes place due to time consuming appeal procedures mandated in the jurisdiction. The time between sentencing and execution has increased steadily between 1977 and 2010. In 2010, a death row inmate waited an average of 178 months (close to 15 years) between the sentence and the final execution. [2] Thus at any given point of time, there is a high probability that death penalty inmates would escape, the basic problem wouldn’t go away ever, contingent on the fact that the security doesn’t improve. That is the unintended consequence of having a complex and time consuming appeal procedure. Lastly, my opponent points out that the death penalty acts as a safeguard of the sanctity of life imprisonment, since people focus on abolishing death penalty rather than life imprisonment. The argument has a flavor of slippery slope, since under this particular contention, we aren’t arguing against life imprisonment. a) The social and cultural contingencies of European Union are widely different from those of other parts of the world. b) The arguments against death penalty are in an entirely different vein from the arguments against life imprisonment. Abolition of death penalty relies on a strong life imprisonment policy. Even if abolition of death penalty leads to abolition of life imprisonment, that doesn’t strengthen the case for death penalty. IF death penalty is morally abhorrent and socially futile, the fact that it would lead to abolition of life imprisonment doesn’t really say much. It shouldn’t be kept on *just* to keep life imprisonment in place.2. Deterrence: As I stated in my first round, the studies on deterrence impact have been consistently non-conclusive. On April 2012, National Research Council was asked to assess whether the available evidence provides a scientific basis for answering questions of if and how the death penalty affects homicide rates. The committee examined studies that have been conducted on deterrence and the death penalty since the 1976 Supreme Court decision in Gregg vs. Georgia, which ended a four-year moratorium on executions.It concluded that “that research to date is not informative about whether capital punishment decreases, increases, or has no effect on homicide rates. Therefore, these studies should not be used to inform deliberations requiring judgments about the effect of the death penalty on homicide. Claims that research demonstrates that capital punishment decreases or increases the homicide rate or has no effect on it should not influence policy judgments about capital punishment.”[3] Thus the deterrence impact my opponent speaks of has already been refuted by the NRC. For the murderers themselves stating that they didn't kill because of teh hanging sword, for example, there was the basic statistical error of an incomplete and implausible model of potential murderers perception of and the response to the use of capital punishment. Defense Futile: Con raises an important point. Why have these qualms with just death penalty? Why not every form of punishment? The answer is because death penalty is the only punishment that fuels off the public cry for justice, and thus has the highest probability of being wrought in political and social contingencies. When a person is being granted death penalty because he’s to be isolated from the society, the aim can be easily fulfilled by punishing him with a LWOP. It is this, and solely this punishment, that tries to gain something extra- it is not enough to isolate him, he has to be killed by the state to *prove a point*, the point that his crime was so heinous that his life isn’t worth living. This arbitrary line is what is decided by the state, and exactly why the devaluation of life comes into picture. There are no positive impacts coming off from death penalty, the only extra *impact* it has on the society is the political and social demons it satisfies. And it should be noted, again, that the social demons are never satisfied fully. In fact, with one death penalty, a standard for the future referral of death penalties is set, fuelling this collective social desire for murder. Innocence: It seems that Con is okay with innocents being murdered as long as some guilty are being killed off (even though LWOP would ensure that the guilty people do not interact with the society, and result in essentially the same outcome). It has to noted that we do not know the definable amount of lives being saved by death penalty, given that there is strong research on both sides, and the latest research blew holes in all of them. He agrees that the innocent ARE being killed though, so that’s one argument down. Secondly, the only reason Life imprisonment isn’t given that much urgency while reopening cases is because death penalty is more urgent. With death penalty being abolished, LWOP would be the highest level of punishment, and would be given due focus. Todays judicial behaviour can't be modelled on a potential future system. I look forward to the next round. [1] http://www.bjs.gov... [2] http://journalistsresource.org...# [3] http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org...