Resolved: In the United States, true intent ought to have a higher weight in court than ends.

I negate. Definitions: True Intent - Objective truth of the intent of an action Ought to - Should, morally compelled, etc. Value in this round is Justice, as that's what we attempt to achieve through the courts and the legal system. Justice is defined as giving each their due. Our current legal system works, when determining causes of crimes, on a basis of "beyond a reasonable doubt". However, "beyond a reasonable doubt" does not always present the truth. In fact, (I don't need to provide evidence for this), there are quite a few times in history where evidence had been uncovered later to prove that a "criminal" was indeed innocent. It is clear that since there is absolutely no way to truly determine why someone committed an act, there will always be imperfections in the system. Because of that, we are not giving each their due, and therefore we are being unjust. Just because we supposedly CAN do it with a unanimous vote of the jury right now doesn't mean that the verdict is true. Let's say an African American man owns a candy shop. I go in. I steal a box of Nerds. Does that suddenly mean I'm racist? Let's go even further, and say I was in LA during the Rodney King Riots. My jury panel happens to be all black. What do I do eh? They convict me doing it because I hate black people or whatever; but that doesn't suddenly mean that I did it BECAUSE I was racist. In law, sure, but as the resolution says, we're talking about TRUE intent. And there is no way to ever determine true intent; there is no equation or algorithm for that. You can HIT the mark, sure, but that's not giving EACH their due, as when the legal system happens to actually convict someone for their TRUE intent, they're just spraying the bullets of punishment and praying they hit in the right places. Justice always hits the mark. And weighing for intent does not. SUMMARY: 1) We cannot determine intent; the resolution cannot be weighed; default CON. 2) We cannot determine intent; justice is not served; go CON based on Value. RE to PRO Case: "No where does the Pro have to prove that this action is even capable of happening, but simply if someone's intention should be punished before someone's result." I'm going to assume that morals dictate law and not the other way around. The resolution states "In the US, true intent ought to have a higher weight in court than ends". Then he goes and says "we don't need to think about whether or not this is implementable or not". I don't think that's how things work. We CAN'T know whether true intent or ends ought to have a higher weight in courts UNLESS we know of the consequences. We can't just arbitrarily say "Oh, commercial jetliners should only have three wheels" and then just go on to compare how, say, three wheeled vehicles have much less accidents than vehicles with more than three wheels or whatever. We can't just weigh other instances that are RELATED to determine how ANOTHER instance will work out; this isn't pre-algebra, not every graph is a straight line with a directly proportional slope. There are negative slopes, scatter plots, all your conics sections, etc. In order to even BEGIN debating the resolution, we MUST take into account the effects of if this EXACT resolution was implemented. This counts as an overview, as it attacks an assumption in his case. (Cause obviously, commercial jetliners need more than three wheels) I. Punishing ends is good. If we only punished on based on intent, then children will basically learn that if they say "I didn't mean it", then they can basically get off with absolutely anything. Even though to our more-mature minds it seems kind of ridiculous, children can't understand such a complex mechanism in the first place. This will lead to a worse off society, where few if any people get justice because they just lie to get off the hook. II. It ought not to because if it did, ridiculous things would happen. Professor Jacobs explains how our current legal system today has been twisted to do extremely unjust things in the name of justice: (Jacobs, James B. Professor at New York University School of Law, "Hate Crimes: A Critical Perspective" Crime and Justice Vol. 22. University of Chicago Press, 1997. P.37) "[W]itnesses may be called on to testify about how the defendant told (or laughed at) racist or homophobic jokes, or whether he ever used racial slurs. In Grimm v. Churchill, 932 F.2d 674 (1991), the arresting officer testified that Grimm had a history of making racist remarks (pp. 675-76). Similarly, in People v. Lampkin, 457 N.E.2d 50 (1983), the prosecution presented as evidence racist statements that the defendant had uttered six years before the crime for which he was on trial (p. 50). In effect, the trial may turn into an inquisition on the defendant's character, or at least his values and beliefs." I think the debate comes really down to this: "Do we, or do we not, weigh something based on its real world effects?" Basically, my position is that we should and my opponent opposes it. I really think that we need to find if something is moral or not by seeing its effects on the real world. We can be good and benevolent ALL WE WANT, we can believe that intent should be valued over ends for punishments ALL WE WANT, but AS LONG AS the resolution for this debate is "In the United States, true intent ought to have a higher weight in court than ends", we need to weigh the debate based on its real world effects. As long as we're talking about something real, the United States Court System, we need to look at what would happen if the courts actually implemented this system of morality. My opponent says in R2, that "[t]he criminal justice system OUGHT TO prioritize them self to only be concerned with what was intended". I personally believe that it's true, intent should be the determiner of the punishment - but that's not how justice works. Justice doesn't work like lightning from God's finger; we aren't all-knowing and omniscient. My case says that the criminal justice OUGHT NOT prioritize themselves to concern themselves with intent, because then we WOULDN'T be giving each their due. "The road to hell is laid with good intentions" - 17th century proverb AS LONG AS "United States" and "in court" exist in the topic, You cannot vote PRO.