Death penalty is never justified, under any circumstance

"The truth is that some crimes are so outrageous that society insists on adequate punishment, because the wrong doer deserves it" PRO attempts to diffuse this justification by 1) citing the futility of the death penalty as any form of solace, 2) how it devalues life, and 3) how it can possibly lead to a slippery slope in the specific case of Naini Sahina, a victim of a jealous husband who sought to dispose of his murdered wife's remains in a tandoor oven. --- An interesting response, thanks. I agree that the BOP is larger on me here, and if Con can posit even a single case where death penalty is warranted, he wins this debate by default. I’ll start with the rebuttals. Con began by trying to find the limit of the tolerance level of the ‘society’ in a sense. In a sort of balance sheet approach, he contends that even if we set the liability of a death penalty extremely high- there MUST be a level of attrocity that reaches and surpasses this liability making the punishment relavant. However, this mischaracterizes the nature of the punishment. The punishment is handed out as a form of retributive justice, rather than restorative justice ( which focusses on the issues and needs of the victims and the offenders) rather than merely punishing the offender. This balance sheet apprach do not work in a restorative justice framework because the ‘punishment’ that is meted out does not focus on the cause of the crime- something that is imperative if we are to lower the incidence of the said crime in future. So, taking the improvised outrageous condition outlined by Con, suppose we catch the killer at time t- when he has already killed 1000 people. We can kill him, or imprison and study him, say. The concept sometimes isn't that easy to articulate, so here's a table you might want to go through before going through the defence argument.There is always a cause for someone being the way he is. And there's always a solution to that, be it medical, or psychological. I'm not arguing to release a deranged killer into the wild, restorative justice system *allows* to address the cause of this disorder. Even in an extreme case, where we are nowhere close to developing a tool to address a specific psychological disorder- we have a specimen that can help us understand the condition better right there with us. Why would we want to kill him, if we can use him to further our understanding of the problem? We can keep him in the prison for the entirety of his lifetime, as a fair punishment for all the deaths that he caused, while using him to lessen the cost of those deaths on the society. There is no reason to kill the guilty, he’s going to die anyway.What we CAN do is extract all we can from him, to lessen the pain of his existence. This is where Lord Danning’s proposition over some crimes having no place in a civilised society come forth. Someone steals, you give back the money and enforce a time out to the robber. The victim is ‘right-ed’ again. You don’t right the victim when you kill the guilty even though you CAN right the victim through an alternate punishment. Interestingly, although this isn’t really a line of argument I was interested in going in the debate, but I have to mention it. Con mentioned, while developing the Naina Sahni case hypothetical–‘ What if, upon conviction, the murderer was set free, and then began a mass killing spree involving hundreds if not thousands of chopped up women and tandoor ovens?’ If a court cannot even sentence a person, i.e, the evidence of his guilt isn’t enough to impison him- it cannot, and should not, discuss death penalty for the person. The death of an innocent person by the state is a a risk that’s associated with death penalty contingent to the system. Something irreversible. Moving on, Con argued that allowing such a criminal to run free devalues life even more. The problem with the argument is that the defence isn’t arguing for *freedom* of the killer. Its arguing to not kill him, he still needs an adequate punishment. Once we catch the killer- which is necessary to punish him, we imprison him. We subject him to the alternate justice system, we understand his motivations, bring about the relavant social changes to prevent further similar crimes- and force him to lessen the pain of his existence through the punishment. He mentioned the Night stalker case to strengthen the argument. The night stalker had emotional and psychological issues stemming from a traumatic childhood. At the time of his conviction, his reaction to the reporters was reported to be, “"Big deal. Death always went with the territory. See you in Disneyland.” Was death penalty really a punishment? Hitler committed suicide. There are things scarier than death. Killing guilty does not prevent further regression since the criminal is going to die with or without state sponsorship. On the slippery slope, I guess I’d agree with Con. I forgot that debate, and we did argue over the fact that abolishing death penalty has a possibility of a slippery slope where we abolish life imprisonment too, as has been experienced in a lot of European countries. Coupled with the latest experiences in Asian countries, more specifically India and China, the death penalty could go either way, and probably depends on the way it is carried out and the contingencies of the social structure within which the policy is applied. We should still be wary of being too DP happy, because that’s what’s pushing India to make rape a capital offence fo rexample, the public demands it. This point is too area specific to discuss on this forum, however. Summing up, in this round we went over the argument of ‘enough is enough’, which lead to a discussion of restorative justice and how it scores above retributional justice in terms of social benefits. Con doesn’t address the futility of death penalty as any form of solace, so that goes unrefuted. The argument of devaluing life was misinterpreted and I showed exactly how not hanging people doesn’t devalue any life, given that death is a natural end. And to many, its not even a punishment. (and again, a reference to how restorative justice would score better that retributional in this regard). Finally, I dropped the slippery slope argument, because it can go either way, and there are too many variables to keep track of if one were to successfully isolate the impact of the policy to the expected future policy. I look forward to the response by Con. And the addressal of the deterrance argument, which Con mentioned he would argue in the next round. Over to you :)