Death Penalty

First off I would like to start with a critique of the resolution. The resolution that my opponent put forth is thusly: "It is Pro's responsibility to show why it is right to use the death penalty and it is Con's responsibility to show why the death penalty is wrong." yet with the phrases right and wrong certain assumptions are made. The first assumption that is made is that there is some form of objectivity. With this assumption we are saying that X is always wrong or X is always right when this is simply not the case. (Sure some things are objective like numbers and so on but in the case of an action always being condemned or condoned there is never objectivity). And I would like to add an impact to this, when assumptions are made, esspecially if they prove to be incorrect, it lowers legitimacy. Of course the loss of mine or my opponent's legitimacy will most likely not hurt anything in the long run but what if a political leader makes an assumption like this? What if political legitimacy is lowered? When political legitimacy is lowered revolutions ensue[1]. But let's ignore that and move to the on case arguments. //Refutations\First off my opponent argues that there is no deterrence but this is blatantly not true. Studies where done in all 50 states showed that the death penalty does in fact act as a deterrent but not only that, it saves lives![2] Also, "Professors Hashem Dezhbakhsh, Paul R. Rubin, and Joanna M. Shepherd of Emory University found that each execution, on average, results in 18 fewer murders."[2] This evidence right here stands in direct contradiction to my opponents evidence which is only referencing countries with already low or lowering murder rates. My opponent also makes a major fallacy here by assuming that because Iceland has the lowest murder rate in the world and that it doesn't use the death penalty, a correlation exists is just not true and misleading. My opponent then makes the argument that the cost of using capital punishment on an inmate is enormous compared the the "low" cost of incarceration. First off the assumption that it costs more to kill a prisoner than to have him be in prison for life is just not true. Justice for All says that Life Without Parole costs at least $1.2 million to $3.6 million more than capital punishment cases.[3] "And life without parole prisoners face, on average, 30 or 40 years in prison while the annual cost of incarceration is $40,000 to $50,000 a year for each prisoner or more! There is no question that the up front costs of the death penalty are significantly higher than for equivalent LWOP cases. There also appears to be no question that, over time, equivalent LWOP cases are much more expensive - from $1.2 to $3.6 million - than death penalty cases."[3] So as we can see, with this evidence being presented, my opponents argument that the death penalty costs more is false. Next my opponent argues that with the death penalty the killers get off free but that is not the case. Their life is ended. They have no chance to do anything else. That is the worst punishment imaginable! " But can't we do that anyways by putting them in prison for life for a fraction of the cost?" No we cannot. Please cross apply my previous evidence regarding the costs which shows that it is actually cheaper to kill prisoners than to keep them in prison AND if you cross apply my evidence that states that capital punishment actually saves lives and thus it's easy to see that this argument does not work on a monetary level and the level of preservation of life. My opponent makes the classic killing the innocent argument but what if they are put in jail for life and and they are either killed in jail or die in jail? That is irreversible as well. But regardless what my opponent wants is a perfect society in which there are no risks but there will always be risks yet we must face them in order to better society and save lives. //Arguments\A: First off I would like to say that since we live in a Democracy majority rules and thus if the majority is in favor of a system is should be kept because if we ignore the voice of the majority we are undermining our own system. But let me get to the important part of this, Americans overwhelmingly support capital punishment[4] and if we are to ignore their wishes we undermine the very system which we fight so hard to protect. B: Maintaining the death penalty promotes a better prison environment for the workers inside. If the death penalty were abolished, violent criminals could murder their guards with no fear of death seeing as Con's plan makes it illegal. If we have a bad work environment we will not draw well educated and compassionate guards.[5] C: I would also like to add deterrence to my case real quick, the Bureau of Criminal Justice compared the number of executions to the number of murders committed and guess what? When more executions were committed, the lower the murder rate was and conversely, the less executions were committed, the higher the murder rate was so this empirically shows that the death penalty DOES have a deterrence effect.[6] D: Not all life sentences are without parole and thus murderers can still get out and commit their crimes again. Here is a list of different criminals who committed violent crimes, were put in jail, got parole and committed the crimes again: http://www.wesleylowe.com... So as we can see, the death penalty does have a deterrence effect, it saves lives, it ultimately costs less, it provides a safer prison environment and it stops repeat offenders. I await Con's responeses.