Capital Punishment

My arguments1/ Death Penalty is JustCon has agreed with me that the most atrocious criminals should receive the most severe punishment. I thank him for his understanding.There is only one difference between his point of view and mine. He thinks that the most severe punishment is LWOP, not the death penalty. However, the fact is “99.9% of all convicted capital murderers and their attorneys argue for life, not death, in the punishment phase of their trial” [1] So there is no doubt that the death penalty is the most severe punishment.If Con’s assumption about LWOP is true, then it means that we deny the convicts a painless death and instead we torment them for the rest of their life. It is torture. It is a cruel and unusual punishment. It is immoral and unconstitutional. Therefore it can not be used as a replacement for the death penalty.2/ Death Penalty deters crimesa/ The report of The National Research CouncilIn Round 1, I have said that seventeen out of twenty four studies from 1996 to 2010 claim that the death penalty does deter crime. [2] Why should one review is enough to outweigh seventeen? What makes it more reliable than the others?b/ 88% of the nation's criminologists believe that the death penalty does not deter crimeBertrand Russell has said: “It is not what the man of science believes that distinguishes him, but how and why he believes it. His beliefs are tentative, not dogmatic; they are based on evidence, not on authority or intuition.” [3]There is a fallacy called “Appeal to Authority”. It has the following form:- Person A is (claimed to be) an authority on subject S.- Person A makes claim C about subject S.- Therefore, C is true.This sort of reasoning can become fallacious in some situations. One is “there is a significant amount of legitimate dispute among the experts within a subject”, and one is “Appeal to an Unidentified Authority”. Since there are many studies which prove the opposite and the mentioned criminologists are not named, “Appeal to Authority” can not be applied in this situation. [4]c/ States without the death penalty have lower rates of homicide than states with the penaltyLet’s imagine a situation like this:- State A has a homicide rate of 10, after the death penalty is instated it decreases to 9. - State B has a homicide rate of 3, after the death penalty is abolished it increases to 4. So we have a state without the death penalty has lower rates of homicide than a state with the penalty, even though the deterrence effect is obvious. Therefore, this source doesn’t disprove my point.Because the homicide rates vary drastically from state to state regardless of whether the death penalty is implemented or not, we can only know whether the death penalty deters crimes or not if we compare the homicide rates in the same state when it has and has not the capital punishment. In Round 1, I have already shown that “the murder rate increases when the death penalty is abolished and decreases when it is reinstated” [5]Rebuttals1/ EconomyInstead of addressing my points, Con tried to attack my sources. He just said it is out of date and disregarded everything. I would like Con to elaborate why the cost calculation now is different. What I have shown is the death penalty may have higher cost at start but over time LWOP will cost more. Since the cost increases over time, LWOP will become more and more expensive. If it costed more than the death penalty in 1994, it will cost much more now.Scheidegger’s study was released in 2009. He said that because it is very expensive and time consuming to collect raw data so he used “one existing data set which, although somewhat dated, contains the necessary information for an estimate of the effect of the death penalty on plea bargaining in murder cases”. [6] He also reviewed other newer studies before he reached the results.In Round 2, I pointed out a contradiction in Con's argument. He had no answer. Because he dropped the arguments, he has conceded this point. So even if I don't prove that LWOP is more expensive, I have successfully refute this point.2/ SocietyCon said I ignored “the statistics which place an emphasis on the death penalty, rather than the system of law as a whole”. But it doesn't matter where the data emphasis, the fact is, the system is at fault, if there is any fault, not the penalty. I would like Con to explain why “It is the idea of the death penalty that results in such a high ratio of those executed”. People do not show up in the death row on their own, they are there because they are sentenced to be there. Blame the judge, not the executioner. If the system is racist and sends black people to death, it's the system's fault. If the system sends mentally ill people to death, it's the system's fault. The penalty itself has nothing to do with it.I have proved above that even if there is racism in the system, it is not the death penalty's fault. Now I will prove that there is actually no racism at all. According to Dudley Sharp, 47% murderers are black and 37% are white, the ratio of white-to-black victims in the aggravated circumstances are from 4-to-1 to 8-to-1, and the ratio of black robbers/white victims versus white robbers/black victims is 21-to-1. [7] The results that Con has cited is the consequences of this, not racism.Con said that someone sentenced to LWOP will have more chance to of being exonerated than someone sentenced to death because he has more time for appeals. It is not true. After a sentence is made, you have a limited time to declare your intention to appeal. The number of times you can appeal is also limited. [8] In fact, convicts sentenced to death actually have better chance to get out of prison. [9] Therefore, Con’s assumption is incorrect.3/ MoralityCon has clarified his arguments, I thank him for that. However, his analogy is inaccurate. Yes, “if someone breaks a toy, we should not break one of their toys back”, but we do not encourage the victims’ families to kill the culprits themselves for revenge either. And while “we should not break one of their toys back”, we are supposed to report to the adults, who have the responsibility to punish the troublemaker. Therefore, there is nothing wrong if we ask the government to punish those criminals.The analogy of Timothy McVeigh is also wrong. Criminals can use whatever excuses to justify their action. McVeigh claimed that he did it in the name of justice, but he has no right to do so, while the government has a function of carrying out justice. It is not “we are in fact using the same logic that McVeigh used”, it is McVeigh who used our logic in a twisted way.Con accused me of using the straw man fallacy. Please elaborate why it is a fallacy. It is simply an analogy. Why is it hypocrisy to kill the criminals who kill people but it is not hypocrisy to lock up the criminals who lock up people? It proves that there is no problem even if we do what the criminals do.[1] "Death Penalty and Sentencing Information In the United States" (1997), Dudley Sharp[2] http://www.cjlf.org...[3] http://www.goodreads.com...[4] http://www.nizkor.org...[5] "The Deterrent Effect of Capital Punishment: Evidence from a 'Judicial Experiment'", Hashem Dezhbakhsh and Joanna Shepherd (2003)[6] http://www.cjlf.org...[7] http://www.prodeathpenalty.com...[8] http://crime.about.com...[9] http://blogs.berkeley.edu...