The United States should have a death penalty.

Roy is a great debater, but at this point there is no way he can win this. He has stated "he will not argue deterrence," and then banked everything on winning “justice” and “cost,” but he drops key arguments under cost. In one last attempt at winning, Roy tries to shift the BOP to me in the final round, stating that I have the BOP because I’m arguing for a change to the status quo. However, as Roy points out, the resolution is whether the United States (as a whole) should adopt the death penalty. Because some states have it and some don’t, the BOP is shared. Roy fails to uphold his half of the burden.JusticeThis argument = fail. Roy says it’s immoral not to have a death penalty, but not immoral to have one that we never use. Roy is perfectly happy if the State merely uses the death penalty as a plea bargaining tool. Roy himself said that it is good that the Green River Killer was offered a plea bargain because by getting the location of all the bodies, we saved law enforcement costs. If cost can outweigh the need to have the death penalty in a particular case, why can’t cost outweigh the need to have a death penalty at all? Roy himself admits that cost trumps justice.In addition, I had two turns to justice. First, innocent people are sometimes put to death. Roy claims that this hasn't happened since 1992, but my own source notes that in the modern era, lawyers have focused more on exonerating people who were still alive, since it is pointless to investigate cases when the person was already put to death. Roy claims that the “CSI effect” means that people won’t convict without DNA evidence, but what would you do if you were on a jury and the only evidence of who murdered someone was an identification from one eyewitness? Would you let the alleged killer go free because there was no DNA evidence? Prosecutors have stated that even in modern times, juries are still willing to convict people - even in murder cases - with only eyewitness testimony. [1] There is still a risk of innocent people being executed. Here is a list of exoneration from death row that have happened in modern times (2010-2014). [2]The second turn to justice is that the racial bias of prosecutors determines which murder defendants are charged with a capital offense and which are charged with a non-capital offense. The prosecutor decides when to charge death and is twice as likely to charge a black defendant with death than a white one [controlling for all other variables]. Roy tries to get out from this argument by saying that there will be black people on the jury, but the prosecutor’s charging decision is more important because it directly affects who gets put to death. Roy claims that the “circumstances of the offense” matter. I agree. In Texas (between 1976 and 2011), 99.6% of the state’s executions were for the murder of a white victim. [3] It’s not that no one kills black people in Texas, it’s just that Texas doesn't consider that to be a crime worthy of death. Thus, in most death penalty cases, the race of the offender and the race of the victim are the biggest factors in determining who dies. That’s not a “just” system.Because the innocence and racism arguments turn justice, this is a sufficient reason to vote Con.Roy’s last two arguments here are: (1) Kant and (2) an argument about “should.” First, Kant did say that the punishment must fit the crime. But we don’t rape rapists, so we don’t have to kill killers. This crude “eye for an eye” sort of justice is unnecessary. A life without parole sentence sufficiently “matches” the crime of murder to ensure justice. Second, Roy argues that when you say “people should live in peace,” you can’t argue about how hard it is to live in peace. However, saying the government should do something is less abstract than saying people in general should do it. Rule utilitarianism tells us that it’s immoral for the government to adopt a policy if the cost-benefit analysis shows that the costs to society outweigh the benefits.Opportunity costRoy misinterprets this argument the entire debate. Even if the death penalty saves money in the long run, in the short run it trades off with spending on other things because states have limited budgets [and cannot go into debt]. So even if Roy wins “no net cost,” I still win on opp. cost.States should be spending the money instead on education and police. Roy drops that our failing education system costs us $2.3 trillion per year. This is the biggest impact in the debate. We should spend all the money we can afford on improving the education system. Roy also drops the study that each additional police officer prevents 24 serious crimes per year. Instead of spending $1 million/year on the death penalty, a state could hire 20 police officers and prevent 480 serious crimes. [4] Roy also drops the study that police have a larger deterrent effect than does the death penalty, so money is always better spent on more police, rather than the death penalty. Roy loses on this argument alone.CostRoy makes a HUGE mistake here by dropping my responses to incarceration costs. He drops that death row inmates are incarcerated on a separate ward. This separate ward is known as the “death row” in the prison. Roy drops that because they require separate facilities, incarcerating a death row inmate for one year costs $90,000 per year more than incarcerating a normal inmate for a year. Roy’s statistic of $29K is the cost of incarcerating non-death row inmates. If you use the correct cost of death-row incarceration in Roy’s cost equation, you get:death penalty cost = $2.0 million + 15 * ($29K + $90K) – 0.2 *$2 million – 35 * $29K= $2.28 millionThis means that factoring in the savings from plea bargaining and incarceration costs, the death penalty costs $2.28 million more per inmate than a sentence of life without parole. Roy’s argument is completely eviscerated here by dropping that death-row incarceration is more expensive. Roy’s only potential saving grace here is arguing that incarceration costs will increase over time. However, it costs $90K more per prisoner to incarcerate a death row inmate. As long as the cost of incarcerating a death row inmate rises at the same rate as the cost of incarcerating a normal inmate, the $90K cost-differential would remain unchanged. In addition, Roy completely ignores the fact that court costs rise over time as well (empirically), even faster than prison costs. The salaries of prosecutors and defense attorneys often rise quickly because they have to stay (somewhat) competitive with the private sector to attract decent attorneys. If court costs double over 50 years [as Roy assumes of incarceration costs], a capital trial would cost $4 million.Because even factoring in all the cost savings, the death penalty is still $2.28 million more expensive per case, vote Con. Roy has no contention to balance against this.Roy admits that one of his plans to save money is unconstitutional (limiting appeals), and tries to rely on censuring judges. However, in most states juries are the ones who impose capital sentences, so what good would censuring judges do? Juries are the reason that in 93% of capital trials in California, the state pays for the capital trial but the jury refuses to impose death. This is really expensive. Florida spends $23 million per execution because it pays for a ton of capital trials that do not end in a death sentence. [5] This is also a reason to vote Con.Lives in prisonRoy’s thesis here is still unclear. There are 87 times more murders inside prisons in DP states than non-DP states, so the DP is not a good deterrent inside prisons. [6] Regardless, the risk of a terrorist attack because we cannot interview extradited suspects outweighs. Roy completely drops extradition. Vote Con.[1] Skype call with bluesteel, re: his convo w/SF prosecutors[2] http://tinyurl.com...[3] http://tinyurl.com...[4] median police salary = $52K[5] Fordham at 2758 [6] http://tinyurl.com...