Death Penalty

Ill offer rebuttals in this round and this rebuild and summarize everything in the last. I will offer direct rebuttals to his contentions. R1) Costs My adversary states in short that the DP is costly, which is a valid critique. People that oppose the DP often argument as my adversary did , is that life in prison actually costs less than the DP when you are comparing the cost of capital and non capital trials. Using plea bargaining as a bargaining chip off sets that. If someone pleads guilty, the cost of a trial and all the other accompanied expenses are avoided. Most people take the plea bargain chip as it defaults to life in prison. So using the DP as a tool to get them to plea bargain forces does two things 1) Reduces costs 2) Serves justice How does it serve justice? This seems like a counter productive point, but to get the plea bargain the person usually has to give up details about who the killed, what they did with the bodies, etc. This provides closure to the families and allows justice to be served. It's a different type of justice as killing the person would serve justice if they could not find the body or know anything about what happened to their loved one, but knowing and having their loved body at least provides closure. Plea bargaining is more often used than one would think and can cut costs by nearly half sometimes, so it would actually be cheaper to use plea bargains as a way to reduce costs and serve justice. [1] R2) Wrongful convictions The amount of wrongful convictions is so small that it is not even a factor. There have been around 15,000 executions in the US since around the 1,900s. With advances in technology, nearly 25 death row inmates have been released upon further evidence being found. With new forensics and biological examinations, it is way to easier to confirm if someone is guilty. Death row exonerations have actually increased greatly[2]. At this point there is a minimal chance someone will actually be convicted guily and executed innocent. The chance of a proper exoneration if someone is sent to death row guilty, in comparison to them being executed innocent are much higher. DNA and new technology does not lie, and it's almost impossible to execute someone that is innocent these days. Not saying it does not happen, but the rate of error is so small that it virtually has no impact. 3) Race This is literally just false. Lawyers play a small part in people who receive the DP, and the people that generally get it as I stated above deserve it. African Americans normally get it because the de facto commit the most crime in the US and other places. In london the amount of crimes committed by African Americans are overwhelming and in the US they lead Caucasians substantially. Saying a certain race gets the DP more is not an argument if that race is committing the most murders. [3] 4). Deterrent this my adversary is just wrong about. Almost any expert will tell you the DP acts as a deterrent. See my main contentions. The question is how effective of a deterrent. He is asserting that it does not work at all which is blatantly false. Each execution on average stops around 18 - 30 murders [4] [1] http://www.cjlf.org... [2] http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org... [3] http://www.fbi.gov... [4] http://www.cbsnews.com...