Death Penalty

Now onto rebuttals: My opponent mentions that the death penalty is more humane than being in jail. I whole-heartedly disagree with this. As I said before, the death penalty is state-sanctioned murder. Why do we get the right to decide who lives or dies? Yes, people commit horrendous crimes, regardless, you cannot tell someone not to murder and in the same breath say that you have the right to murder them. I would argue 2 points against their Prison=Misery argument: 1. Not all prisons are not as despicable as you make them out to be. Most prisons in the U. S. provide sufficient quarters for rooming, decent food, and space for exercising. No, prison isn"t luxurious but it isn"t supposed to be. In the cases of rape, it is disgusting how widespread prison rape is but that isn"t an excuse to say that killing prisoners would be easier. As you mention further in your argument, our prison system needs revamping. 2. And anyway, murder is worse. If the prisoner wanted to die, they could kill themselves. That is not up to the state (though I would prefer that nobody killed anyone). I do not care what crime the person committed, the death penalty is an unacceptable form of punishment. I agree that our prison system needs a reboot. Instead of just sending people to jail over and over again, we need to work on helping them get better. Framing a model inspired by Norway isn"t a bad idea though I advise against copying their system completely. However, your time period, 10 years, is ridiculous. You have no evidence to prove that a prisoner can be fully rehabilitated after 10 years. What makes you think that is a good number? Some people have deep seated issues and to put a time frame on their healing is absurd. Adding that kind of pressure is not helping matters. Prisoners are likely to pretend they are fine to avoid being killed, and then they"d end up back in jail because they weren"t truly rehabilitated. Also, I resent how you describe prisoners like they are animals. Euthanized? Really? These are people, human beings we are dealing with here. Even if the felon has committed the crime of rape or child molestation (which are disgusting), they SHOULD NOT be given the death penalty upon conviction. 1. Juries are not perfect because they are people. One, they have biases which can blind their better judgement and two, even without bias (which is impossible), juries make incorrect convictions. At least if the sentence was life imprisonment and the person is found innocent, yes they have lost years of their life but at least they aren"t dead despite being innocent. I"d say that is net better. In regards to bias, here is some more evidence from my R2 argument: "The death penalty has also been proven to be biased towards white people and against people of color. The death penalty is also more likely to be applied when the defendant is black and the victim is white. . Martin O'Malley, JD, the former Governor of Maryland asserts: "Our nation's legacy of slavery and racial injustice find continued offense in our use of the death penalty. Our death row population is more than 40% black -- nearly three times the proportion of the general population. " "The death penalty is racist and has been applied in racially-discriminatory ways. African American men are disproportionately sentenced to death. Prosecutors, juries, and judges are much more likely to apply the death penalty when the victim is white and the defendant is black. Race is a "potent influence" at every step in the criminal (in)justice system, including search, arrest, indictment, trial, conviction, sentence, and execution. " 2. ""while any remaining evidence is found, appeals are exhausted, and retrials held. If the conviction upholds"" This serves to attack your Prison=Expensive argument. No, the actual killing of the prisoner is not costly. What is costly is the trial. Because the death penalty is so severe, the trials take forever. The following is my Forbes evidence from R2: "According to a study by the Kansas Judicial Council (downloads as a pdf), defending a death penalty case costs about four times as much as defending a case where the death penalty is not considered. In terms of costs, a report of the Washington State Bar Association found that death penalty cases are estimated to generate roughly $470,000 in additional costs to the prosecution and defense versus a similar case without the death penalty; that doesn't take into account the cost of court personnel. .. . .. citing Richard C. Dieter of the non-partisan Death Penalty Information Center, Fox News has reported that studies have "uniformly and conservatively shown that a death-penalty trial costs $1 million more than one in which prosecutors seek life without parole. And let's not forget about appeals: in Idaho, the State Appellate Public Defenders office spent about 44 times more time on a typical death penalty appeal than on a life sentence appeal (downloads as a pdf): almost 8,000 hours per capital defendant compared to about 180 hours per non-death penalty defendant. New York state projected that the death penalty costs the state $1.8 million per case just through trial and initial appeal. " It is crazy expensive because the death penalty is not just something you can apply to someone after they are convicted. The cases will be long and the prisoners are very likely to appeal which lengthen them even more. Prisoners appeal when the sentences are just jail time, why wouldn"t they appeal when it is death? I believe that the U. S. does need to improve our incarceration system but making the maximum prison sentence 10 years is not the way to do this. And killing an inmate is NOT how we rehabilitate people! Putting a time limit on rehabilitation is hypocritical and shows that the Pro doesn"t truly care about it. As I"ve said, convictions can be wrong and I don"t care if we kill just 1 innocent person, that"s 1 too many. Furthermore, the death penalty has not been shown to deter crime. This is some more Round 2 evidence: "There is no evidence that the death penalty deters any crime whatsoever. Why are wasting taxpayer dollars for something that doesn't even have any benefits? "Whether one compares the similar movements of homicide in Canada and the US when only the latter restored the death penalty, or in American states that have abolished it versus those that retain it, or in Hong Kong and Singapore (the first abolishing the death penalty in the mid-1990s and the second greatly increasing its usage at the same), there is no detectable effect of capital punishment on crime. .. "" The death penalty is inhumane and wrong from a moral, economic, and logical standpoint. By allowing ourselves to think that killing someone for a crime is the best way to solve our problems, we only perpetuate the idea that murder is acceptable.