In the United States, true intent ought to have a higher weight in court than ends.

First of all, I disagree with you about what you have to prove. You said that, "The PRO is not bound to argue that, in an imperfect world, court decisions can practically be determined by true intent. Rather, the PRO is obligated to prove that, assuming the courts were equally able to base decision on ends or intent, using the intent would deliver more justice." But your claim is that in the United States, true intent ought to have a higher weight in court than ends. Since your debate applies to the United States, not some hypothetical perfect world where judges can read minds, you do have to show that courts can determine true intent. Because if intent cannot be determined, it is impossible to attain justice based on a person's intent. As for my argument, I will not prove that intent should have no weight in a courtroom, just not as much weight as the ends. The morality of an action is based on the intent of the actor. What determines the morality of an act can be debated either way. Everyone has different moral beliefs. But the purpose of courts is not to enforce moral beliefs, but to enforce the law. The way our criminal justice system is currently set up, the laws are based on the ends, but intent is also factored in, and this is the way it should be. For example, the crime of murder is "Every person who unlawfully kills a human being with malice aforethought," malice being express when "there is manifested an intention to unlawfully kill a human being" or implied when "the killing resulted from an intentional act, the natural consequences of the act are dangerous to human life, and the act was performed with knowledge of the danger to, and with conscious disregard for, human life." (This is the statute for California, but the law here is fairly similar in all the states. As you can see, for an unlawful homicide to be murder, the killer must have had intent. However, the intent goes only to the weight of the charges, not whether charges are brought at all. "Every person who unlawfully kills a human being, without malice aforethought and without an intent to kill, is guilty of the crime of involuntary manslaughter." And while the differences between involuntary manslaughter and murder can be a lifetime in prison, the initial requirement is the ends, not the intention. If nobody is killed, it isn't murder or manslaughter, regardless of the intent. Even to be charged with attempted murder, you must have actually done an act to try to kill someone, not merely formed the intent. This is how the law currently is, I am aware that this debate is on how it should be. If the law were changed to give more weight to intent than to the ends, who intends to kill someone, even if they do nothing to act on that intent, would be punished just as severely as someone who actually commits murder. Why should we punish someone who does nothing the same as someone who actually ends a life? Intent does not kill. You have to act on your intent to commit a crime. And intent can easily change. Take your example of the robber who breaks into a house to steal, scares away a murderer, and leaves without taking anything. His intent before he broke into the house was to steal, but at some point it changes. At which point do you prosecute his intent? Or say someone intends to kill someone. This would-be murderer buys a gun and goes to find their would-be victim- and then, seeing that person, realizes the consequences of shooting that person and decides not to. This person had the intent to kill, and even acted on it by buying a gun. But by not going through with the act, a murder did not occur and no one was hurt. But by your logic, since this person had intended to kill, they will be prosecuted for murder. And we can never completely know someone's true intent. Judges and juries can guess by the persons actions, but it's just that- a guess. We can't read minds, and unless we can, we can't punish people for what we think they intended.