Resolved: The United States of America should abolish the Death Penalty

"The use of Capital Punishment is very expensive in many states. On average every Death Penalty case costs about 3 million dollars." This first argument that my opponent uses in not against the death penalty. It is against a flaw in the capital punishment system. It is true that the costs are high but it does not have to be this way. It is only in this age where it costs so much to put someone to death. In most of the world, for most of humanities existence, humans just killed people and their barely was a cost. It literally would cost .25 cents to buy a bullet an then kill someone with it. But in our society, things are way to expensive. So I urge my opponent to think about an actual argument against the death penalty instead of one against one of the flaws with the system. I happen to agree that the death penalty is way to expensive. But a flaw within the system should be fixed. It doesn't mean the whole system has to be done away with. "The DP is not effective in reducing crime rates. Several older studies show that this was the case, however there is not clear correlation for this, and there aren't any studies that show it is still effective in reducing the crime rates." The problem with your supporting evidence is that you didn't show any actual statistics that show that the death penalty is ineffective. Your chart only provides peoples opinions on whether it deters crime or not. "there was no credible scientific evidence that the death penalty deters criminal behaviour" It is common sense. You kill a person, they can't do any more bad things. You could send them to prison, but then we would be paying money for a person that deserves to be executed for the rest of our lives. According to statistics "provided by the office of California's nonpartisan Legislative Analyst, the current annual cost for maintaining an inmate in a state prison is $47,102" (http://www.mountain-news.com...). That amount that it costs to keep a criminal alive will not change much since they have to pay for their food, water, medical expenses, and etc. But the death penalty would not have to cost much more than a few cents if we were to fix the flaw in the system. "Fifty-seven percent of the chiefs polled said they agreed with the statement that the death penalty does little to prevent violent crimes because perpetrators rarely consider the consequences when engaged in violence." While this may be true in some cases, the death penalty is also used to get people what they deserve. People deserve punishments that match the crimes they commit. When someone murders someone, paying thousands of dollars for them to live in prison is not justice. But putting them to death makes it clear that this type of behavior will not be tolerated. I really don't care if people consider the consequences when they commit a crime. They know that they are doing something wrong and they should get a punishment that matches the crime they committed. "The huge problem with the Death Penalty is that it runs the risk of executing an innocent person. Since 1973, 173 people were found to be innocent in death row, and were released" Again, my opponent has mentioned a flaw with the death penalty. But the death penalty has also killed over 1200 people that were guilty criminals who did horrible things (http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org...). In other words, the death penalty kills way more guilty people than innocent people. While it is still a problem for innocent people to be killed, we should focus on removing the flaw instead of removing the whole system. The death penalty should also be allowed because it is constitutional. The 5th amendment states that there no one shall "be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation" (https://www.law.cornell.edu...). In other words, when someone is convicted of a crime, they can lose their right to life. So...my opponent hasn't really argued against the death penalty. They have just argued against flaws within the system.