The United States should abolish the death penalty

I would like to begin by thanking my opponent for an enjoyable debate. Grouping points of contention together for a more logical flow, I will first examine the resolution, present reason for affirmation, and then address extraneous points.The ResolutionThe key word of the resolution is "should." A hungry victim of an African civil war should eat food because the alternative is starvation, but this is not always practical at the moment. In the same way, if I can prove an alternative to the death penalty would improve the American Justice system, then the United States should abolish the death penalty in favor of that alternative. The moral imperative remains regardless of the current practicality.Justice and AffirmationAccording to my opponent's source [1], the purpose of the justice system he gave was only for the current (flawed) criminal justice system, not for justice systems in general. In modern legal philosophy, there are three types of justice: distributive, corrective, and compensatory [2]. While distributive justice is irrelevant to this debate, the other two deserve consideration when comparing the extent to which proposals achieve justice and to what degree. Following only the criterion of corrective justice, every system so far presented is just, because they punish according to the crime convicted; however, only the liability system also accomplishes compensatory justice, because the victims receive due compensation from those who aggress against their person and property. Therefore, the liability system should be implemented because it achieves more justice than the death penalty. This alone affirms the resolution.Alternatively, life without parole is also a more just punishment than the death penalty for reasons provided in my second contention, such as the possibility of wrongful execution. My opponent has continued to deny the existence of such wrongful executions, even the Johnny Garrett case. Johnny Garrett denied that he had confessed the crime he was convicted of and continued to claim innocence through his execution. None of the evidence, even the finger prints [3][4], matched Garrett. DNA evidence later convicted Leoncio Rueda, whose fingerprints were matched to those left at the crime scene [4]. Leoncio then confessed to the crimes [4], as seen in these videos [5]. The frequency of wrongful execution in the United States is inestimable, but so far Wikipedia has listed 138. This number only represents those wrongfully convicted to death that were later found innocent. Every wrongful execution is a corrective injustice. My opponent tries to weigh his estimate of the exoneration rate (calculated using only Garrett) with the recidivism rate, but should we adopt life without parole, the recidivism rate and the posthumous exoneration rate would both drop to zero. Therefore, life without parole should also be implemented over the death penalty because such a change would benefit justice. This alone also affirms the resolution.RebuttalThis section will address points not already addressed above.The liability system and life in prison do not violate natural rights because a convicted aggressor of natural rights has forfeited his natural rights to the extent that he has destroyed them.Once again, I am not denying that a liability-oriented justice system enacts slavery on convicted murderers. My opponent has further conceded the constitutionality of this system.I do not support giving convicted murderers leaves of absence.Because companies that rent convicts would be liable for their activity upon escape, they would have every reason to maximize security. Escape would likely be impossible, but certainly less frequent than in the present.Maximizing security in the modern age may even be easier and cheaper than my opponent believes. Implementing modern GPS technology would allow the company to know the location of its convicts, and combining such technology with a shock-collar system would result in a device that shocks criminals more the further they get from the prison, should they somehow escape. The constant pain would limit the prisoner's movement and the Global Positioning System would allow immediate location. There is a bounty of further possibilities, and a private company has incentive to invent ways to minimize its costs. There is no reason to believe that prison labor couldn't be cost-effective.Because of the law of demand (demand decreases with price) [7], if a convict can be rented at less than minimum wage, the convict would be viable for work options economically prohibitive for other workers. Thus, my opponent is committing fixed-pie fallacy by assuming that the jobs the murderers work would necessarily come from deserving civilians.My opponent has provided evidence that murderers unfortunately still find ways to kill while incarcerated. This is a problem with the prison system, not with the justice system. Neither side wants murderers to conspire with other prisoners that have parole and neither side wants prisons to allow a prisoner means to stab another. Both situations are avoidable.The negative argues that although he cannot prove causation, that there is still a strong correlation. A strong correlation does not indicate causation any more than a weak correlation if there was no scientific experiment. There are plenty of confounding factors in the mix that I have listed, although I agree with my opponent that there is no way to prove that they are causal either. My opponent then tries to use one of my sources, which only listed potential factors and admits that "no factors in the model have been tested for statistical significance in the course of preparing this paper" [8]. No factor can be proven to be causal, and the source my opponent tried to use lists many potential confounding factors. In short, deterrence cannot be proven.My opponent has agreed that the purpose of punishment is not to be harsh, but just, and as I have already proven, both life without parole and a liability system are more just than the death penalty.SyllogismAs the debate concerns a moral imperative, the debate must be evaluated according to a moral criterion. Both my opponent and I have agreed that the purpose of a punishment is to be just, which is therefore a fair standard for evaluating this debate. I have shown that life imprisonment without parole to be more just than the death penalty due to the occurrence of wrongful executions. Additionally, I have shown how a liability system may be implemented that would be even more just than life imprisonment without parole, as it would result in compensatory justice as well as corrective justice. With two preferable alternatives, the death penalty should be abolished, as this would accomplish the agreed standard of justice. The resolution is affirmed.ConclusionMany thanks to my opponent for an exciting debate. I wish him a great future on this site.Sources[1] http://en.wikipedia.org...[2] http://www.scu.edu... [3] http://www.skepticaljuror.com... [4] http://en.wikipedia.org... [5] http://www.bloodshedbooks.com... [6] http://en.wikipedia.org...[7] http://en.wikipedia.org... [8] http://ag.ca.gov...