The Death Penalty is a justified means of punishment

Thanks for accepting, looking forward to your arguments, For clarification I offer the following definitions;Merriam-Webster defines cruel as: disposed to inflict pain or suffering : devoid of humane feelingsUnusual as: not usual : uncommon, rareDeath row: nickname for that portion of a prison in which prisoners are housed who are under death sentences and are awaiting appeals and/or potential execution.Moving forward, I'll explain how we're going to break down future arguments, death row has been a topic of debate since it was reinstated in 1976, most notably to whether it breaches the "Cruel and Unusual punishment" section of our 8th amendment. The United States Supreme Court ruled that it did not, however i will attempt to change the opinion of my fellow debaters among other reasons why Capital Punishment, (e.g. death penalty) is not a justified punishment. Therefore my value for this round is Morality- I uphold life because the topic suggests the taking of another human's life is some how justifiable, despite its hypocrisy and inhumane nature. My value must be upheld in this round because it encompasses the idea of rationality, or what the majority of human beings would do in a situation. My criterion is as follows, Sanctity of Life, meaning anything that harms human life becomes immoral and unjustified. C1: Capitol Punishment is a breach to our 8th amendment.If we look at the amount of inmates in the country, which in a research in 2002 concluded topped over 2 million(1), and the amount of inmates who have suffered from capitol punishment since 1976 and who are currently on death row, is exactly 4501 (2)(3). Right from the start we see this form of punishment as meeting the definition of "unusual", However i will go even deeper, only about 3.5%(4) of all those inmates were actually incarcerated due to "violent crimes" which is usually the type of crime necessary for considerations of the death penalty. When we do the math it equals to about 70,000. Which means only 6.5% of all inmates who commit "violence crimes" are sentenced to the death penalty, obviously meeting the unusual definitions, considering 93.5% of all the other criminals serve their time in prison instead. We must also keep in mind that the estimation of 2 million inmates was from 2002, over 10 tens ago, meaning this number could in fact be inaccurate. Furthermore the forms of execution used are both inhumane and cruel. As an account of the use of the electric chair depicts, "...the prisoner's eyeballs sometimes pop out and rest on [his] cheeks. The prisoner often defecates, urinates, and vomits blood and drool. The body turns bright red as its temperature rises, and the prisoner's flesh swells and his skin stretches to the point of breaking. Sometimes the prisoner catches fire....Witnesses hear a loud and sustained sound like bacon frying, and the sickly sweet smell of burning flesh permeates the chamber."Even the most "humane" version of executions, the lethal injection is questionable at best. Not only are doctors excluded from these procedures but the can result in painful side effects, "This lack of medical participation can be problematic because often injections are performed by inexperienced technicians or orderlies. If a member of the execution team injects the drugs into a muscle instead of a vein, or if the needle becomes clogged, extreme pain can result. Many prisoners have damaged veins resulting from intravenous drug use and it is sometimes difficult to find a usable vein, resulting in long delays while the inmate remains strapped to the gurney."(9)I: This destroys the concept of "sanctity of life" as we set forth only a certain amount of people to be punished by this extra measure of punishment, let alone it's obvious breach to the 8th amendment when we see the cruel means used to execute the inmates. C2: The death penalty can potential kill innocent people. Regardless of how accurate the justice system seems to be, we as humans will always make mistakes. ALWAYS. This alone is reason enough to abolish the death penalty. The possibility of having sentenced someone unjustly towards their death, and later discovering they were innocent would make me question the legitimacy of our government. Death is irreversible while a person in jail who is innocent can be released and this alone is reason enough to vote affirmative. My opponent may argue that the justice system however is getting more and more accurate due to them continuously freeing innocent death row mates. 140(5) inmates to be exact, this however is not the case, it is almost often the case that the courts themselves don't prove the innocence of the inmates but outside sources(6) "it took the intervention of people completely outside of the justice system for them to win back their freedom."(7) Their has also been over 9 cases since 1976 that have substantial evidence pointing towards the innocence of several executed inmates, let alone the dozens of possibly other innocent inmates that were wrongly executed(8). Nine cases in which innocent people were executed wrongly, how many more must be executed until we learn this is not a just means of punishment? One case of a person wrongly executed should be reason enough to abolish the death penalty but nine is superfluous reason to dissolve the death penalty. I: The courts failure to recognize nine innocent people before they were executed is not only reason enough to do away with the death penalty, but it very clearly breaks the sanctity of life, when it executes not just 9 inmates, but 9 INNOCENT inmates. C3: The justice system is biased, and racist especially in terms of the Death PenaltyOf the 492,852 murders between 1976 and 1999, 51 percent were of whites and 47 per cent were of blacks. (Homicide trends in the US. Trends by race, Bureau of Justice Statistics.) This fact seems completely nonracial related, in fact most murders in the united states are intra-racial(10) meaning that White victims were often slain by white perpetrators, and likewise with Black victims by Black perpetrators. However 80 percent of the people executed since 1977 were convicted of murders involving white victims.Now lets look towards criminal statistics, blacks make up only 13.6% of the U.S population.(11) Yet they're more than 40 percent of the country's current death row inmates, and one in three of those executed since 1977.If the statistics don't convince you of the racial bias in the judicial system, then this must "In June 2000, a landmark study of the US capital justice system was released. Entitled "A Broken System", it had examined death penalty cases between 1973 and 1995 and found that the rate of prejudicial error in capital cases was 68 per cent. In other words, courts found serious, reversible error in almost seven of every 10 of the thousands of death sentences that were reviewed on appeal during the 23-year study period."(12)I: These statistics and account lead to one logical conclusion, racial bias is very prominent in the judicial system, and it is unfair to let this corruption execute unnecessarily where other options are avaliable. Sources:[1] http://usgovinfo.about.com...[2] http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org...[3] http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org...[4] http://www.quora.com...[5] http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org...[6] http://www.law.northwestern.edu...[7] http://www.americanbar.org...[8] http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org...[9] http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org...[10] http://www.murdervictims.com...[11] http://www.infoplease.com...[12]http://www.amnesty.org...