Resolved: In the United States, capital punishment should be outlawed.

Thank you for your arguments. I'll now begin my rebuttals: My opponent's first argument is "would-be criminals fear the death penalty", that is to say, the death penalty deters crime. However, as I have already shown in my second contention, many studies are simply erroneous in their results or flawed in their methodology. In my opponent's own citation, if you turn to the second page of the article, you will find this very interesting paragraph about an economist from the Wharton School of Business, named Justin Wolfers: "last year [Wolfers] co-authored a sweeping critique of several studies, and said they were 'flimsy' and appeared in 'second-tier journals.'" So, within even my own opponent's citations, the large amount of criticism of these studies' methodology cannot be ignored. I have already proved through my case that several landmark studies such as the Mocan-Gittings study have made errors as simple as a single miscalculation. The facts are, the current studies are poorly developed and their results are poorly analyzed. The National Research Council says that research to date is NOT informative enough about whether capital punishment decreases, increases, or has no effect on homicide rates. We cannot rely on faulty studies. My opponent's second argument is that the execution of a murderer provides closure to their victim's families. First, I would like to propose a counterargument. Have you considered what the family of an innocent who has been executed might think? They are certainly not receiving closure as they go to watch their innocent relatives fry in an electric chair or die slowly by a lethal injection. They have been dealt one of the ultimate injustices. What of those families? Second, is life in prison not retribution enough? Spending the rest of your life in a cold, concrete cell with no creature comforts and no way to leave until your body is brought out in a coffin to the graveyard? Is spending twenty, thirty, forty years or even fifty years with little contact with your family, fifty years without any companionship not enough? I would think that spending the rest of my life in prison is a far more punishing sentence then being fried by an electric chair. The final argument my opponent brings is that capital punishment is just. My opponent says that if there is no distinction in punishment between premeditated murder and manslaughter, and no capital punishment for such violent acts, then what would a premeditated murderer have to worry about? Well, there is always life in prison. As I have already detailed, years upon years, decades upon decades of living in a cold cell, living a solitary existence, with no way to leave until you die, is plenty cruel enough. Deterrence is inconclusive, however. There is a vast variety of reported results, and many of the studies conducted are flawed. We cannot consider, therefore, deterrence in this debate. Even though even non-lethal violence towards a person might mean life in prison without parole, that does not mean it is more just to kill murderers. When you think about it, there is no such concept as "more" just. Justice is black and white. You are either just, or you are unjust in your actions. It is an injustice to the four percent of men executed who are innocent, or the many like Joe Arridy who were mentally disabled or otherwise handicapped and could not account for their own actions. These men have been dealt an injustice. If you want to uphold justice, you must totally prohibit capital punishment, for the safety of all innocent men. Just because even the guilty wouldn't be going to the chair does not mean they wouldn't be punished for their actions. I will say this one more time- life without parole is the harshest punishment, even worse then a quick fry from the chair. Many spend decades in prison, waiting for their bodies to finally fail them, and finally grant them peace. Is that not enough? Capital punishment can never be taken back. You can never commute an execution. You can, of course, posthumously exonerate a convicted man, but the damage has already been done. He has been killed, his family has grieved for him. His friends miss him. Because of the simple fact that it can never be appealed, that you can never take it back, we cannot allow it to continue. 120 out of every 3000 men killed are innocent. They will never come back. They have been executed against their own will, ripped from their own life and ambitions. This is the cruelest injustice, and it cannot stand if we want a just legal system. Thank you.