Death Penalty

Welcome back! its time for round 3! //I'll like to begin by addressing my opponents argument about links to murder with mental illness. He makes a point that many murderers are mentally ill and were unaware of the consequences of their crime. However, only about 5% of murderers are confirmed to have some form of mental illness(usually schizophrenia)...// This is under the clinically-approved standard of mental illness. In addition, we, as a society, think murder is something people will think about in a normal state of mind. But it is quite clear that almost anyone who takes the life of another human is somehow mentally ill. It need not be a chronic condition, such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. However, I can easily demonstrate why murderers are generally not in a normal or stable state of mind: If murder were normal, then it would be rampant. People would just kill and there probably would not even be laws against it, since it would be an accepted aspect of society. Even in near-anarchy locales such as Mogadishu, there is still a sort of natural order that prevents people from going on killing rampages. There certainly is much violence there, caused by (surprise) crazed religious fanatics and clan warfare, but you do not see people killing their brother who they hate with a fiery passion or the neighbor that has more wives than you. This clearly shows that murder is not possible in a normal state of mind. Thus, most murderers are mentally ill/crippled/whatever and there is simply no way for the death penalty to be effective here. Now I notice we have both strayed far off-topic. //As for prisons, it is true that there are often comfortable cells. They are often more comfortable than the conditions poor people are forced to live in(http://www.bitrebels.com......), so wouldn't that not deter somebody from committing a crime? The only deterrence that would come from imprisonment is if there were horrible conditions, which in my opinion, criminals fully deserve. This would offer much more deterrence than killing them.// Even with terrible conditions, it still would not provide enough of a deterrent. There will always be ways to improve life. How is life in a labor camp going to deter someone from millions of dollars in fraud? Not to mention the immense cost of prisons. While cost comparisons are frequently brought up, and it appears both sides are correct about cost, the actual balanced reality is that death penalty costs more only due to extensive appeals and expensive death row prisons. If executions were conducted quickly and efficiently, and without expensive chemicals such as sodium thiopental for lethal injections or sodium cyanide for gas chambers. China utilizes a single or a handful of bullets, which are extremely cheap, quick, efficient, and effective. Pain is also minimal in comparison to most forms of execution. Now the question of appeals may come up again, but this canbe easily dismissed because the crimes I have specified are much easier to prove than murder. And there are no questions of mental culpability or mistrial or anything. So there is less likelihood of appeal and we can also cut down on appeal allowances. In China and Singapore, there are few if any appeals available. //Finally, for the points about libraries, even if there's different editions of books the text inside is still generally the same and easily reproduced. Even if most copies of one book were destroyed it could still be reproduced by other existing copies. It would be nearly impossible to wipe out one book.// This is often true, but not always the case. And that is similar to saying that because we have prints of famous paintings, we need not preserve the originals. Of course books and paintings are not fully comparable, but the analogy can be understood. And even so, most libraries will have unique collections that do not exist anywhere else in a usable condition. It is simply too expensive to produce enough copies of certain books and different libraries will specialize in certain topics. My other example was museums, which much more obviously have unique items that are impossible to replace. Thus, a great deterrence is necessary. //Lastly, my opponent mentions deterrence. Deterring people from committing crimes is more effective through other methods rather than the death penalty.// This is not always the case. We can clearly see that prison is not an effective deterrent for many crimes. More restrictive prisons or labor camps will just not change this. Where there is life, there is hope. Again, a dead criminal can never commit another crime. This does not mean we should execute all criminals, that would be disproportionate and inefficient. I would like to conclude by reiterating my point that justice should serve only to prevent the next crime. It is often too late to rectify the crime that has been committed, but we can always try to prevent the next one. Good luck to my awesome opponent in her final argument! <3 <3 <3