the death penalty should stay and not be abolished

I accepted this challenge. First, I will give definition about 'Death Penalty' Death penalty, also called capital punishment, is when a government or state executes (kills) someone, usually because he has did something wrong. http://simple.wikipedia.org... Now, I will rebut what pro said in the 1st round. Pro said "The death penalty should stay because the murderers have killed innocent lives". But this doesn't justify the popular view that killers should be killed, any more than it would support the idea that rapists should be raped or thieves stolen from. To be just, retribution must be measured and restrained. That's the difference between justice and revenge. So, his assume is baseless. And all words what pro said in the 1st round is illogical because baseless and Pro didn't gave us more explain. I will give you my reasons based on the fact : 1) Executions are carried out at staggering cost to taxpayers. It costs far more to execute a person than to keep him or her in prison for life. A 2011 study found that California has spent more than $4 billion on capital punishment since it was reinstated in 1978 and that death penalty trials are 20 times more expensive than trials seeking a sentence of life in prison without possibility of parole. California currently spends $184 million on the death penalty each year and is on track to spend $1 billion in the next five years. Because Millions currently spent on the death penalty could be used to assist the families of murder victims. Many family members who have lost love ones to murder feel that the death penalty will not heal their wounds nor will it end their pain; the extended process prior to executions can prolong the agony experienced by the family. Funds now being used for the costly process of executions could be used to help families put their lives back together through counseling, restitution, crime victim hotlines, and other services addressing their needs. So, it's better than spend much cost for death penalty. 2) There is no credible evidence that capital punishment deters crime. Scientific studies have consistently failed to demonstrate that executions deter people from committing crime anymore than long prison sentences. Moreover, states without the death penalty have much lower murder rates. The South accounts for 80% of US executions and has the highest regional murder rate. Some criminologist claim they have statistically proven that when an execution is publicized, more murders occur in the day and weeks that follow. A good example is in the Linberg kidnapping. A number of states adopted the death penalty for crime like this, but figures showed kidnapping increased. Publicity may encourage crime instead of preventing it (McClellan, G., 1961). Death is one penalty which makes error irreversible and the chance of error is inescapable when based on human judgment . On the contrary, sometimes defendants insist on execution. They feel it is an act of kindness to them. The argument here is - Is life imprisonment a crueler fate?" Is there evidence supporting the usefulness of the death penalty securing the life of the citizens (McClellan, G. 1961)? Does the death penalty give increased protection against being murdered? This argument for continuation of the death penalty is most likely a deterrent, but it has failed as a deterrent. There is no clear evidence because empirical studies done in the 50"s by Professor Thorsten Sellin, (sociologist) did not give support to deterrence (McClellan, G., 1961). Grant McClellan (1961) claims: In 1958 the 10 states that had the fewest murders " fewer than two a year per 100,000 population - were New Hampshire Iowa, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Wisconsin, Rhode Island, Utah, North Dakota and Washington. Four of these 10 states had abolished the death penalty. The 10 states, which had the most murderers from eight to fourteen killings per 100,000 population were Nevada, Alabama, Georgia, Arkansas, and Virginia - all of them enforce the death penalty. The fact is that fear of the death penalty has never served to reduce the crime rate (p. 40). 3) Innocent people have been convicted and executed. The wrongful execution of an innocent person is an injustice that can never be rectified. Since the reinstatement of the death penalty, 142 men and women have been released from Death Row nationally....some only minutes away from execution. Moreover, in the past two years evidence has come to light which indicates that four men may have been wrongfully EXECUTED in recent years for crimes they did not commit. This error rate is simply appalling, and completely unacceptable, when we are talking about life and death. Execution risks imposing the ultimate and irrevocable punishment on the wrong person. The 18th century English jurist William Blackstone wrote that it is better that 10 guilty people escape than that one innocent suffer. A system that accepts any risk, however small, of putting the innocent to death should provoke special revulsion. Whether this has actually happened is up for debate: There's no way for an executed person to be officially exonerated. Yet serious doubts have been raised in a dozen cases just in the past decade. In the past 40 years, more than 130 people have been released from death row after evidence emerged of their wrongful convictions. That number is almost certain to grow because more convictions are being challenged on grounds of DNA evidence, police and prosecutorial misconduct, and the increasingly acknowledged limitations of eyewitness testimony. Two states Maine and Rhode Island abolished the death penalty because of public shame and remorse after they discovered they executed some innocent men. 4) Race plays a role in determining who lives and who dies. The race of the victim and the race of the defendant in capital cases are major factors in determining who is sentenced to die in this country. In 1990 a report from the General Accounting Office concluded that "in 82 percent of the studies [reviewed], race of the victim was found to influence the likelihood of being charged with capital murder or receiving the death penalty, i.e. those who murdered whites were more likely to be sentenced to death than those who murdered blacks." This arbitrariness, of course, is a gross injustice in its own right. As well as being confined to people who live in certain states, the death penalty has been imposed disproportionately on the poor and uneducated, on defendants with substandard lawyers, and on those whose victims were white. A study in Maryland found that a black killer of a white victim was 11 times more likely to be sentenced to death than a white killer of a black victim. These disparities violate the constitutional guarantee of equal protection of the law. Despite the fact that African Americans make up only 13 percent of the nation"s population, almost 50 percent of those currently on the federal death row are African American. And even though only three people have been executed under the federal death penalty in the modern era, two of them have been racial minorities. Furthermore, all six of the next scheduled executions are African Americans. The U.S. Department of Justice"s own figures reveal that between 2001 and 2006, 48 percent of defendants in federal cases in which the death penalty was sought were African Americans" the biggest argument against the death penalty is that it is handed out in a biased, racially disparate manner. 5) So, Life Without Parole is a Sensible Alternative to the Death Penalty In every state that retains the death penalty, jurors have the option of sentencing convicted capital murderers to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The sentence is cheaper to tax-payers and keeps violent offenders off the streets for good. Unlike the death penalty, a sentence of Life Without Parole also allows mistakes to be corrected. There are currently over 3,300 people in California who have received this alternative sentence, which also has a more limited appeals process last approximately 3 years. According to the California Governor's Office, only seven people sentenced to life without parole have been released since the state provided for this option in 1977, and this occurred because they were able to prove their innocence. Source : http://www.deathpenalty.org... http://www.bloombergview.com... That's enough from me for the first round, I now return this floor to pro. Thank you.