The death penalty is the best way to punish criminals convicted of capital crimes

First I would like to say that I used to do high school debate and I was always taught to initialize the beginning of the rebuttal in my constructive if I was Con. Arguing over semantics in a debate has no real purpose. I did not bring up m whole rebuttal and only showed how the information in my contentions counter your information. To try to criticize my intelligence is simply argumentum ad hominem. Now on to the actual debate. First I will extensively go into my opponents contentions and then respond to his rebuttal. His contention 1: The death penalty is constitutional. First I direct your attention to this article [1]. "The U.S. Supreme Court has determined that a penalty must be proportional to the crime; otherwise, the punishment violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments.". What crimes constitute as proportional to the crime? My opponent says " My proposal is that those who rape do not deserve to be raped, but deserve to be slaughtered.". His definition of capital crime is defined as "A crime, such as murder, rape, or betrayal of one's country, that is treated so seriously that death may be considered an appropriate punishment.". To be honest- what constitutes something that deserves the death penalty. Does every rapist deserve the death penalty? Serial rapists? Rapists who also kill? Child rapists? My opponent has presented a vague definition and in turn has vague arguments. Okay. The supreme court does not believe that the death penalty is unconstitutional. I don't disagree with you there. However, there is no clear criteria for determining what makes death "considered an appropriate punishment" and what makes death "proportional to the crime". This part is unclear. Since earlier my opponent suggested that the man who had only raped 1 person- Pete's wife- should get the death penalty: He is saying that every rapist should get the death penalty- regardless of the severity of the crime. The death penalty is considered the best punishment for all rapists? Death is proportional to the crime? Where's the lic in that? Not to mention that rape is a very grey area in the sense that it is hard to prove that someone is indeed a rapists. How many allegations have there been against men raping women only to turn out to be false? In my university alone there have been 2 popular stories of guys who have had their lives ruined because of fake rape allegations. There have been football stars that were on their way to the NFL who had their lives ruined because of fake rape allegations. Under my opponents suggestion- they would all be dead. Contention 2: The death penalty will deter capital crimes. I have already went against this argument in my own constructive. Since then my opponent has not brought in any new information. This contention has been proved wrong. Contention 3: The retribution factor. I have already touched upon this earlier in my first rebuttal against his first contention and I have touched upon this in my constructive. Now let me respond to my opponent's remarks. My opponent brings up the statistic that it costs $375 per hour for a case. He says that its wrong to say the death penalty is more expensive than other cases- ignoring the whole appeal process involved in death penalty cases. The appeal process is so extensive that often times inmates spend at least a decade in prison before they get executed. Many on death row have spent time there for over 20 years. The number of time spent on death row before execution only continues to grow- in such a manner that it would be pointless to spend so much money on the case if the inmate is already in lets say his 50's. [2][3] I would also like to point out that my opponent says "These people don't deserve to eat up taxpayer's money to live in a cement box for the reset of their life". Yet, he still ignores the statistics I gave in my constructive which state that the whole death penalty process costs more money for taxpayers than life imprisonment does. You CANNOT use the argument that taxpayer's money is being eaten up for life imprisonment when it costs more money in a shorter period of time to execute a criminal that will spend around 20 years in prison anyways. "What about James Holmes? He killed numerous people in the Aurora Theatre Shooting, and is a psycopath. " This is another problem I have with the mentality of the opponent. It is highly likely that James Holmes has mental issues. What is the solution to treating mental patients? Therapy? Drugs? Rehab? Any sort of mental health services? No. My opponent believes they should be put to death. Mental health is a serious issue. And we should not be killing the mentally ill- we should be using our resources to help them to prevent them from doing things like this. With proper medication and/or treatment we can prevent capital crimes from occurring- not killing those who have serious mental illnesses after their lack of treatment. The last thing I would like to point out is that my opponent says "This debate is should the death penalty be around." Should is a synonym for ought. I do not know what he is trying to say here. Also I urge everyone to look at the evidence, logic, and the arguments presented in this debate. Please do not get caught up in definitions of what a proper "constructive" argument is supposed to be and whether or not I added a paragraph too much in my constructive. I urge people to make a judgement based on the arguments presented in this debate. I will hand things off to Pro for the conclusion rounds.