The death penalty should be banned in the United States.

I am not sure if my adversary ran out of time or just did not want to build a case. While he is supporting the death penalty, it is still his responsibility to build a case as to why he supports it. Simply saying that he supports it because it is the status quo is not a viable contention and leaves me with nothing to refute. R1 clearly shows this. While removing the death penalty can be viewed as changing the "status quo", that is only in regards to some states. Other options to the death penalty are already established and in place, the main one being life in prison without release. There are currently 32 states who have the death penalty, and 18 who chose not to use it [1]. So this would only be changing the status quo in those specific states, and having them adopt the methods of the states who have chosen not to use it. So in essence, it really is not changing the status quo in the way my adversary is claiming it is. Since he has chosen not to build a case and only to offer rebuttals, this leaves me with no contentions to refute. He has not provided or shown any reasons as to why the death penalty should remain in place which was outlined in R1 as the purpose of this round"R2 : Present our cases no rebuttals"Thus according to my previously established rules, the only thing I can do is crystallize the points that I have already made. It is a shame he has chosen not to present a case and drop this round. Since he has offered no reasons as to why he supports the death penalty, I will spend the rest of this round rebuilding my initial contentions. Contention 1Ineffective DeterrentAs I have previously shown the death penalty in itself does not act as proper deterrent. We can see from my previous sources that it is estimated that only 18 murders are prevented per year because of the fear the death penalty provides. So the next thing we need to look at is how many people are executed on a yearly basis. In 2012 only 43 people were executed with 77 new inmates receiving the sentence and facing execution in the upcoming years[2]. So just for the sake of argument let's do some math. Pretend all the stats that I have shown are wrong, and it deters more than 18 murders a year ( this contradicts all of the evidence I have provided, but just hypothetically). Let's assign a number to this. Let's say per execution it deters 10 homicides. With there being 43 executions yearly that would be 43 X 10 = 430. So it has possibly and I do emphasize possibly prevented 430 murders. In a given year around 16,000 -17,000 people are victims of homicide[3] So it could possibly prevent 430 homicides out of 17,000. 430 murders out of 17,000 is only around 2.17 percent. This is just with murders that have no cause. Take all the other type of murders and that number increases to nearly 35,000[4]. So if you were take 430 and find what percentage it is of the total murders that occur, it is verily over 1 percent. 1.2 to be exact. Now lets take the actual numbers according to statistics. It is believed to prevent 18 murders on a yearly basis. 18 murders out of 17,000 is verily over 1 percent. It is around 1.05 or so. Now in the same way lets compare it to the total murder rate. 18 out of 35,000 is .51! It is under half a percent of murders that it is preventing. To say that the death penalty is a proper deterrent is wrong in all regards. That is even considered if it acts as a deterrent at all. As you can see my from my graph in R1, states without the death penalty have a lower homicide rates than states who have it. My adversary may say you can not compare states, but that is inaccurate. You can easily compare states with similar populations and location, and see that states without the death penalty in fact have a lower homicide rate. That is why a majority of the analyst and criminologist say that it is not a deterrent at all. Again see R1 for this as far as sources. 88 percent of the nations leading criminologist say that it does not deter crime. Contention 2Violates the Right to LifeI have already shown in R1 how it violates the constitution and deceleration of independence and only in circumstances that warrant the death of someone, such as acts of self defense can permit ending someones life legally. These are situations in which you have to act to live. After someone who has committed a crime, we are trading a life for a life and it does not live up to the standards of the constitution. That is going back to the code of Hammurabi. An eye or an eye and a tooth for a tooth kind of method[5]. I have also shown that multiple countries have abolished the death penalty for just that reason. Con may say it prevents other murders from occurring, so taking their life is justified. This is if they are released. People whom are sentenced to life in prison are never released, and almost never escape. That is the point of max penitentiary prisons. Life in prison is still allowing them to live with the promise of no bail or release, and still abiding by the constitution. There are also other viable options that we could consider such as exile. Make a data base with the criminals name and crime and see if another country would take them. Pass the information of what the criminal has done to the next country and if they are willing to take him/her, exile him/her from the states all together. If no one wants to take a criminal, confine him/her to life in prison. Him/Her spending life in prison, is not risking the life of any innocent people outside of the prison and has the same results. Since my adversary has chosen to offer no case, I could only assume what he would say in response to this or in a case if he had presented it. Any issues regarding the government spending money to keep them are alive are a non factor as well. Again this is just a strict violation of human rights, and with only 70 people being sentenced yearly and around 3,000[6] on death row all together it will and could not permit the right to end a life in the name of saving money. The amount of money that would be saved is so miniscule in itself that it is a non factor. Killing someone because of that reason leads to the justification of killing anyone for any reason. Even people who could be released and are in prison. If someone is viewed as a detriment to society end their life, this is the same line of thought that Hitler possessed and a road we can not go down.Contention 3Cruel and Unusual Punishment. I won't spend much time on this because I built a case for this in R1 and it speaks for itself. Lethal injection, a gas chamber, even the electric chair are cruel ways to die. While the criminal may have committed a cruel act, we can not tread on the Constitution to get back at them. Ending someones life in a horrid manor, is not justifiable because they may have chose to do the same to someone else. We would be no better than they are, and resorting to their level. Life in prison or possibly if they consider exile as a option, offers the same results while maintaining the integrity of the constitution. In ClosingMy adversary has chosen not to even build a case as to why he supports the death penalty, therefore we have no reasons to believe that it is ethical, viable, or even morally acceptable within the context of the society in which we live. He can not build a case because he dropped his round to build a case, and can only offer rebuttals to the reasons I have presented. He can not show why he believes it is permissible and acceptable but only hope to contest the reasons I have presented. Sadly due to him dropping his round and not abiding by the context of R1 I could only offer my reasons as to why I believe it should be banned, and can not respond to any reasons as to why he believes it should remain effective. This can possibly weaken my case, because I was not able to respond to his contentions but overall weakens his severely more. He has violated the regulations for rounds that I presented in R1, and lost his ability to provide any contentions in the process.The most logical thing we can conclude is that the death penalty has ran its course and should be abolished. We should follow states like Maryland who have just abolished it, and then maybe we can see the lower homicide rates those states are experiencing while persevering the Constitution and upholding someones right to life. Also in the process we are getting rid of a ineffective deterrent. [1] http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org...[2] http://deathpenaltyinfo.org...[3] http://www.cdc.gov...[4] http://www.cdc.gov...[5] http://eawc.evansville.edu...[6] http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org...