The prohibition of the death penalty.

Pro Case C1: Irreversible Mistakes First, my opponent completely misunderstands my argument about technological advances. Taking and utilizing DNA samples is not done by the defense team – it is done by the police force which then submits its evidence to the court. It doesn’t matter how much the defense team is paid. And even conceding that the defense might not be as legally atune as the prosecution, the law requires that all evidence available for both sides. He dropped my ACLU evidence which tells you that DNA testing is 99% accurate and has led to the exoneration of many people on death row and has acquitted many people pre-trial. Second, my opponent argues that since there were so many people wrongfully convicted then the possibility increases. However, he dropped my specific warrants for this point: 1) as DNA testing becomes more reliable, the probability of future wrongful convictions decreases – remember being on death row can be 8 – 15 years, spanning into a time when DNA testing was not adequately utilized. 2) after all the DNA testing and many appeals the person has still not been found innocent, the chance that he was is negligible and simply becomes speculation. Third, on the recidivism TURN, my opponent argues that 1.2% is only like 1 out of 100 murderers. Yes, that would be like 1.2%. However, regardless of the margin we know (unlike my opponent’s innocents being killed speculation) that these re-occurrences of others being killed are actual innocents being killed by people released from jail. He dropped my other warrant which tells you that recidivism murders do not only have to be 1 murder, there can be multiple murders that have occurred. My opponent tries to argue further that this stat isn’t just for 1st degree murderers. This would only hold if I help the belief it should only be for 1st degree, however multiple states have the death penalty for 2nd degree as well. Also, from an analytical perspective it would be quite rare if someone convicted of manslaughter then committed murder again. It would make more logical sense that someone who actually committed a murder prior would be the one to kill again. My opponent argues that my in-house recidivism argument could have been anyone. That’s true, but he is missing the underlying point of my argument. My argument is more analytical than empirical. I’m not saying since we don’t execute murderers that these 87 people died, but rather life without parole does not solve recidivism. The advantage of the death penalty in comparison to life without parole is that the death penalty incapacitates the criminal 100%, whereas life without parole leaves the ability of the criminal to kill again. My opponent brings up this strange argument where he says since it costs a lot then criminals won’t have jobs if they are released. Problem: high jail costs are not the only reasons why the economy sucks right now. Fourth, on deterrence my opponent presents a study which indicates states which have the death penalty have higher rates of crime than those that don’t. First, prefer my study since it is more contemporary and uses statistics closer to today. My opponent’s study uses statistics as old as the 1960s. Second, my opponent’s study only analyzes state wide as opposed to district wide. This is important because some districts utilize the death penalty more so than others, so the death penalty is not just a state wide phenomenon. Third, prefer my study – it examined 3,054 counties (better than examining the whole state) and found monthly there was reduction in the homicide rates in these counties with wider use of the death penalty. C2: Cost First, my opponent says it is unethical for the state to kill people – thus the cost matters. There is no warrant for this anywhere in my opponent’s case. Second, my opponent argues the death penalty and cost are directly related because prohibiting the death penalty would lead to more money. Problem: my opponent cannot prove that this money would be allocated towards police or jail infrastructure. Third, my opponent drops my argument that we wouldn’t need to have jam-packed prisons if the drug laws were modified and modernized. Don’t blame the death penalty for faulty drug laws. C3: Weak form of justice My opponent repeats that killing is wrong, especially through vengeance. So again I respond that there is no warrant here. C4: Unalienable Rights My opponent says Jefferson altered Locke’s philosophy. This is insufficient because the conclusion, i.e. that natural rights exist, does not mean those rights cannot be taken away. Remember, within a state of nature it is permissible to kill in certain circumstances. But moreover, the Declaration of Independence has no legal weight – the Constitution does. In the 5th Amendment the Constitution recognizes the existence of these negative rights and goes on further to say they can be taken away with due process of law. I would argue further my opponent did not do much research in terms of Jeffersonian philosophy because Jefferson never supported complete prohibition of the death penalty. [1] Con Case C1: Kantian Retributivism My opponent says this notion violates the Jeffersonian, Lockean and other political theorists’ beliefs that giving the government the right to take away its citizens lives will lead to tyranny. First, this doesn’t address the warrants in the argument itself. The argument is that when a criminal murders another individual they are universalizing the action and explicitly stating (by their actions) that killing is permissible. As such, in order to make the world right, the government must execute the person doing the killing. Refer to my argument above for more analysis. Second, the argument my opponent presented is referring to a complete government restriction to all claims of natural rights – life, liberty and property. This is not the case in terms of the death penalty. [1] http://www.monticello.org...