Resolved: The United States Should Abolish the Death Penalty

Thanks to 16k. I am going to give rebuttals in the next round and build my case in this oneI am going to extend some of my arguments from my Roy debate and then add a few more to go with it. Since 16k copied Roys opening definitions, I feel that its necessary to offer my response to him in the same way. Note:A “capital trial” is a trial at which the state intends to seek the death penalty. It is called a capital trial because the death penalty is also known as “capital punishment.”DP state = a death penalty stateNon-DP state = a state that does not have the death penaltyHeinous Crimes - Con is saying that he promotes only the death of heinous criminals. However, Con does not get to make the decision about who to charge with a capital offense. Charging decisions are made by prosecutors, not Con. Therefore, Con must defend how the death penalty is actually applied.C1: CostsOne of the main reasons the death penalty should be abolished is because of how expensive it is. The cost of prosecuting a capital case is significantly greater than the cost of prosecuting a non-capital case.According to Professor Thaxton in “Leveraging Death,” capital cases cost local governments $2 million more than non-capital cases. [1] (p. 541) Capital cases are more expensive because they involve - on average - “five times more pretrial motions,” five times more investigation by the defense team, 66 times longer to select and exclude jury members, 30 days more in court, “twice as many lawyers (by statute),” and “longer and more complicated appeals.” [1] (p. 544)Most of the cost of prosecuting criminal defendants is borne by local governments as opposed to the state or federal government. Currently, local governments are extremely strapped for cash: the GAO reports that to make up for budget shortfalls, state and local governments will need to cut their current expenditures by - on average - 14.2 percent to avoid bankruptcy. [5] The death penalty is such a significant part of local budgets that “[i]n 2009, at least eleven state legislatures considered bills to abolish the death penalty, citing associated costs as one of their primary concerns.” [1] Because local governments are so strapped for cash, spending on death penalty cases trades off with spending on other things (like police, education, and health care infrastructure): "State and local governments are also forced to divert funding from hospitals and health care, police and public safety, education, and roads and infrastructure to pay for capital trials." [1] (p. 541, footnote 269). These tradeoffs have two important negative effects. First, cutting funding from state and local governments is deadly to the overall well-being of the economy. One study found that the under-performing education system in the United States costs the economy $2.3 trillion per year (because it produces worse workers). [3] Second, local governments’ inability to spend more on police [due to expenditures on death penalty cases] is harmful because police are essential to deter crime. Studies estimate that each additional police officer that a city hires prevents an average of 24 serious crimes per year. [4] This cost tradeoff argument turns any of Cons deterrence arguments because the cost of the death penalty leads to smaller police forces, which actually decreases deterrence.In fact, spending money on police is more effective than spending money on the death penalty. Studies have found that because offenders are generally unaware of what the expected sentence is for their crimes [or whether their state even has the death penalty], increasing the certainty of punishment has a larger effect on deterrence than increasing the severity of punishment. [8] Spending money on more and better policing increases the certainty that any given offender will be caught, which has a greater deterrent effect than increasing the severity of punishment, such as by implementing the death penalty. [8] The national clearance rate for murder and manslaughter has dropped to 65%, meaning that each year 6000 killers get away with murder. Local governments would do well to raise their “solve rate” for murders rather than spending so much money to put to death the murderers they do happen to catch.C2: Barrier to extraditionThe European Union and many other countries have established policies that they will not extradite criminals to the United States if there is a possibility that the criminal might face the death penalty (because those countries view the death penalty as a human rights violation). [9] This refusal to extradite impedes counter-terrorism efforts because countries refuse to extradite terrorist suspects to the United States. [2] For example, in 2005, the EU refused to extradite terrorist suspect “Mohammed A.” to the United States, citing the likelihood he would be put to death. [2] If a single large terrorist attack happens due to refusals to extradite, this would outweigh any possible deterrent effect from the DP. In fact, 87% of criminologists agree that the DP has no deterrent effect. [7]C3: Innocent ExecutionsThis is a major issue with the death penalty in itself. Once someone is executed it is final. There is no exoneration or overturning the decision. Nearly 2,000 people have been falsely convicted and exonerated in the past 23 years[10]. One study - which interviewed judges, prosecutors, and police chiefs - estimated the false conviction rate at 0.5%, most of which were caused by misidentification by eyewitnesses[11]. If you put this at a comparative standpoint that means nearly 8,000 people that are in jail are actually innocent. What's even more disturbing is that there is now evidence showing that the FBI has actually faked forensic evidence and falsely executed people on purpose. This has led to around 20 false executions with around another 30 that are sentenced to death[12]. The forensics evidence included blood and also hair samples which is a primary tool used in convictions. Now we are not only dealing with the possibility of *accidentally* falsely executing someone, but also have to accept the fact that the FBI and crime scene investigators are actually *trying* to falsely alter evidence to issue sentences. This is not just deplorable but it also shuts down any attempt at serving justice. One of the main contentions of pro DP activities is that justice is served. That entire argument is now null because the FBI is falsely charging people and the line that pro choice advocates use is now movable and relative to evidence that has been proven and shown to be altered. C4) SuppliesAnother issue with the death penalty is the cost and how difficult it is to obtain the chemicals to issue and serve the execution[13]. Texas is a primary for example of this, as they have reached this stage early. The issue they are currently experiencing will eventually catch up to most other states. They are literally running out lethal injection drugs and are having to experiment with different types of chemicals and methods to serve the executions with. The DP itself is already viewed as walking the line of cruel and unusual punishment, and the only reason it gets a pass is that it can halfway be viewed as *not cruel* because it is instant. The primary drug used in executions is pentobarbital which there is now a shortage of . As is stated Texas being forced to experiment with new drugs is resulting in bad results, and some of the methods and chemicals that are being used (even in other states) is being challenged by the supreme court as cruel and unusual punishment . It is not just Texas but Oklahoma as well. They have been challenged on using midazolam and recently a legislation has been singed to kill inmates using nitrogen gas, all of which the supreme court is involved in[14].C5) Customary International LawThe US is the *only* western country to retain the death penalty as the law, and as long as we keep it that way courts will likely interpret customary international law as *not* establishing that a death penalty is unlawful. The good news is that we interpret the death penalty in *relatively* humane way. Any death by the death penalty is pushing the line of being not humane, but at least we do it quick. We also extend the death penalty to only what is considered by the supreme court as *heinous crimes*. Other countries however do not do this in such a reasonable way. Singapore, for example, has put American tourists to death for possessing small quantities of drugs. If the US could establish that customary international law forbids the death penalty, it could move to enjoin Singapore from killing our tourists if such a situation arose in the future. But as long as we have a death penalty, we have no leg to stand on.This is a major impact as Singapore alone has put 400 people to death for only *minor* drug offenses, most of them being foreign nationals [15]. China has put 53,000 people to death with foreign internationals in the mix as well[15]. By banning the DP we can actually have ground to challenge these deaths under customary international law, and actually end up saving hundreds of our citizens. Soruces[1] Sherod Thaxton, “Leveraging Death,” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Vol. 103, No. 2, 2013[2] http://tinyurl.com...[3] http://tinyurl.com...[4] http://tinyurl.com...[5] http://tinyurl.com...[6] http://tinyurl.com...[7] http://tinyurl.com...[8] http://tinyurl.com...[9] http://tinyurl.com...[10] http://tinyurl.com...[11] http://tinyurl.com...[12] http://tinyurl.com...[13] http://tinyurl.com...[14] http://tinyurl.com...[15] http://tinyurl.com...