This house would abolish the death peanlty in the United States

I do apologize for the typo in the title. Note that for here on, the death penalty will simply be abbreviated as "DP. " With that, let's begin. C1: Risk of executing the innocentHumans are imperfect and so is the criminal justice system. Consequently, there will always be risk of executing an innocent person. Since 1973, 138 pepole have been exonerated from DP to to evidence of their wrongful conviction. During this same time period, more than 1,000 people were executed (1). We must pause and ask ourselves, of those 1,000 people who were executed, how many of them were innocent? In fact, since 1978, we do know of at least 2 people who were executed, and then found to be innocent: Cameron Todd Willingham, and Carlos DeLuna. Cameron Todd was executed in 2004 by Texas for setting a fire that killed his three young daughters at their home. It was found that the prosecutors purposefully hid evidence from the defense in order to get a guilty verdict. The Texas Bar eventually charged the prosecutors with misconduct (2). Unfortunately we are unable to bring an innocent man back from the dead. In the second case, Carlos DeLuna was executed in 1989 for a shooting in Corpus Cristi, Texas. A publication in the Columbia Human Rights Law Review found more evidence of wrong doing by the prosecution and noted, "No one cared enough about the defendant or the victim to make sure they caught the right guy. Everything that could go wrong in a death penalty case did go wrong for DeLuna. ” (3)Andrew Cohen writes of this case: "No one can ever say again with a straight face that America doesn't execute innocent men. No one. " (4) I can cite far more than just these two, but for purposes of the debate, this will be sufficient to prove my point. We have, in fact, executed innocent citizens. In each of these tragic cases, a mis-carriage of justice cost at least 2 innocent people their lives. Unlike live in prison, the DP is an irreversable mistake. I'd like to conclude this contention using the Blackstone's formulation: "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer. " Unfortunately, the DP makes it almost far too certain that we will put to death an innocent man and make the innocent suffer. C2: Cost of the DP Counter intuitively, the cost of administering the DP is far greater than keeping that person alive in prison. With the cost of litigation and appeals, which can take decades, the overall cost of the execution. A recent study published in August of 2016 found that "if the Governor commuted the sentences of those remaining on death row to life without parole, it would result in an immediate savings of $170 million per year, with a savings of $5 billion over the next 20 years. " (5) Some may argue that we can reduce cost by limiting appeals and litigation. This, however, would be unwise for the reasons mentioned in contention 1. Without appeals and litigation, it is far more likely that an innocent person will be put to death. C3: The DP does lttle to deter crimeOne of the main contentions to support the death penalty is crime deterrence; however, there is very little evidence to support the proposition that the DP deters crime. Over 88% of criminologists do not believe the DP is effective at deterring crime (6) and for good reason. In 2009, Radelet and Lacock published their research in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology and found that the DP does not add any deterrent effects to those that are already achieved by long imprisonment. (7) Furthermore, as Amnesty International notes, "The threat of execution at some future date is unlikely to enter the minds of those acting under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol, those who are in the grip of fear or rage, those who are panicking while committing another crime (such as a robbery), or those who suffer from mental illness or mental retardation and do not fully understand the gravity of their crime. " (8)There are far more effective ways to reduce and deter crime. The DP is not one of them. I now turn this debate over to con. I wish him the best of luck in this debate. _______1. (. http://www.amnestyusa.org...) 2. (. http://www.pbs.org...) 3. (. https://www.law.columbia.edu...) 4. (. http://www.theatlantic.com...) 5. (. http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org...) 6. (. http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org...) 7. (. http://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu...) 8. (. http://www.amnestyusa.org...)