Resolved: The United States of America should abolish the death penalty

I will also define the United States of America, as requested by my opponent. United States of America: The 50 states of the sovereign constitutional republic officially known as the United States of America. I will be basing my case, that the death penalty should be abolished, on two main contentions; the practicality and the morality of the death penalty, both of which I will show to be poor enough to warrant the abolition of this dated practice. Contention 1: MoralityThe death penalty in practice is immoral because it is not infallible. Since 1973, 144 people that have been put on death row have been exonerated [1]. What this statistic demonstrates is that the justice system is not infallible, and people have been wrongfully placed on death row. In the past, people have been exonerated of their crimes years after they have already been killed. There have been at least 15 executions since the late 80's in which there has been deemed a strong chance that the person executed was in fact innocent [2]. A major problem with speculating how many people have been wrongfully killed is that we will never know for sure. Law professors have stated that there is simply no accurate way, outside of pure speculation, to determine whether someone that has been executed was innocent or not [1]. This, in and of itself, should be a very troubling statement. The fact that people are being killed regularly while some doubt of their guilt lingers is a stain on the moral fabric of society. It is antithetical to the meaning of the word justice to allow the execution of Americans when it is a well-known fact that wrongful executions are a real possibility and have happened in the past. Despite the complex nature of determining the extent to which wrongful executions have been conducted, a study [3] was published, which concluded that, if all inmates on death row were to remain indefinitely on death row, the exoneration rate would be around 4.1%. This is almost two times greater than the actual exoneration rate, which is near 1.6%. What this tells us is that there have likely been more innocent people executed than have been exonerated. When we consider that the number of those exonerated in the past 30 years is 144, we can see what a truly staggering number that is. Hundreds of innocent Americans killed by their own justice system. Ask yourself how many innocent Americans the government should be allowed to kill. If the answer is 0, then there is no logical position to support other than the full abolition of the death penalty. Contention 2.1: CostThere is a misconception that executing criminals is more convenient and less costly than imprisoning them for life. This is, of course, false. Studies have been conducted in a number of states: In Oklahoma, a study (4) discovered that, on average, capital cases cost 3.2 times more than non-capital cases. In Washington, a study (5) examined death penalty cases since 1997 and discovered that taxpayers had to foot a $120,000,000 bill overall. After the reinstatement of the state's death penalty, it was found that each execution ended up costing taxpayers around $24,000,000. In Kansas, a study (6) from the Kansas Judicial Council concluded that a case involving the death penalty costs, on average, 4 times as much as a similar case where the death penalty is not sought. A study (8), discovered that death penalty cases cost states upwards of $20,000,000 more per year than cases seeking alternative sentences. It found that states with the death penalty spend 3.5% of their budget on upkeep on the legal institutions required to uphold the death penalty, compared to 2.9% spent by states without the death penalty. On top of the costs of the trial itself, prisoners generally spend 20 years on death row before their execution, so the costs of keeping incarcerated prisoners alive apply to them as well during this time. Reports done on the cost of keeping prisoners incarcerated discovered that the current cost of keeping an inmate in state prison is $47,102/yr [7]. Even when assuming that a prisoner sentenced to life will live out 60 years in prison [which they often do not come to close to], the cost does not exceed $3,000,000. This is miniscule compared to the tens of millions of dollars spent on death penalty cases. Donald McCartin, a judge that has sentenced 9 people to death row, has stated that it is 10 times more expensive to kill an inmate than to keep them alive. Contention 2.2: Benefit? Nope. Of course, if the death penalty is costing so much, then there must be a payoff. Right? Wrong. A 2009 survey (9) of leading criminologists in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology showed that over 88% of them say that the death penalty is not a deterrent to murder. Murder rates in death penalty states have consistently remained higher than those in non-death penalty states. We can observe here that there is absolutely no correlation between upholding the death penalty and murder rates. There are no credible statistics that prove causation between the death penalty and crime rates. In fact, the states without the death penalty tend to have lower crime rates than those with it. This shows that there is no correlation between the death penalty and crime rates, and thus it fails to properly carry out one of its only functions. The fact of the matter is that American taxpayers are being forced to squander millions of dollars on an institution that just isn't doing what it should be. Like in any sane business venture, a ridiculously expensive project that isn't providing any benefit should be abandoned to cut everyone's losses. SummaryThe death penalty is a stain on the American justice system. The sole purpose of the justice system is to provide justice for both the victims and the accused and protect society from crime. I have shown in my two contentions above that the death penalty does neither. It has been proven that mistakes have been made in death penalty cases, and people have been wrongfully killed by their own justice system. The exact number of people that have been wrongfully killed will never be known, but there is no doubt that number is greater than what we already know. On top of this failure, the death penalty fails to provide any meaningful reduction of crime rates, while eating up millions of taxpayer dollars. There is no justification to keep this wasteful and immoral institution in place. Sources1. . http://www.newsweek.com......2. . https://deathpenaltyinfo.org......3. . http://www.pnas.org......4. . https://deathpenaltyinfo.org......5. . https://deathpenaltyinfo.org......6. . https://deathpenaltyinfo.org......7. . http://www.mountain-news.com......8. . https://deathpenaltyinfo.org......9. . https://www.amnestyusa.org......