Can you be pro life but for the death penalty

Thank you.My opponent did not explcitly state the resolution in his first round, but based on the title of this debate I will assume that the resolution is:One can be pro-life but for the death penalty. I will be taking the Pro position, and my opponent will take Con. My opponent also didn't lay out any specific rules or parameters for this debate, but I will assume that the burden of proof is shared and that argumentation begins in the first round.Onto my contentions.Capital Punishment affirms the value of lifeThe death penalty ought to be reserved for the most heinous of criminals in our society. The logic behind this is that society is fundamentally skewed when mass-muderers, child rapists, and terrorists get punishments that are significantly softer than the damages inflicted upon their victims and their victims families. Whenever justice is not met in these extreme circumstances, society loses confidence in the system and criminals get the impression that society does not care about murder, thus nullifying the value of life.Alan Keyes, former United States ambassador, writes that, "There are certain circumstances in which the death penalty is in fact essential to our respect for life. If we do not, in our law, send the message to everyone that by calculatedly, coldly taking a human life--in a way that, for instance, assaults the structures of law in a society, or shows a cold-blooded and studied disregard for the value of that life--if we are not willing to implement the death penalty in those circumstances, then we are actually sending a message of contempt for human life. We are encouraging people to believe that that step is not in fact a terminal step when they premeditatedly and fatally decide to move against the life of another human being." [1]It is a moral imperative that we apply the death penalty in the most brutal of circumstances to send a clear moral message to people throughout our society that we will not tolerate disrespect for life. Thus, the death penalty is in fact the pro-life position.Capital Punishment deters murderCapital Punishment acts as a deterent to murder and other crime, as potential criminals are dissuaded from engaging in actions that could lead to the death penalty. Over the years, several studies have demonstrated a link between executions and decreases in murder rates. In fact, studies done in recent years, using sophisticated panel data methods, consistently demonstrate a strong link between executions and reduced murder incidents.One such study came from Professor Robert B. Ekelund and several collegues from Auburn University. Using a small state-level data set from 1995 to 1999, they analyzed the effect that executions have on single incidents of murder and multiple incidents of murder. They concluded that, over the four year period, each execution deterred between 3 and 18 murders. [2] Morever, Michael Summers, PhD, Professor of Management Science at Pepperdine University, wrote in article "Capital Punishment Works" in the Wall Street Journal: "...[O]ur recent research shows that each execution carried out is correlated with about 74 fewer murders the following year... The study examined the relationship between the number of executions and the number of murders in the U.S. for the 26-year period from 1979 to 2004, using data from publicly available FBI sources... There seems to be an obvious negative correlation in that when executions increase, murders decrease, and when executions decrease, murders increase." [3]In saving hundreds of innocent lives every year, capital punishment is the obvious pro-life position.I'll do rebuttals in the next round. Thank you for reading.Sources[1]http://www.ontheissues.org...[2] Robert B. Ekelund, Jr., John D. Jackson, Rand W. Ressler, and Robert D. Tollison, "Marginal Deterrence and Multiple Murders," Southern Economic Journal, Vol. 72, No. 3 (2006), pp. 521-541.[3]"Capital Punishment Works" in the Wall Street Journal: Nov. 2, 2007.