Capital Punishment Should be Abolished

Thanks Pro! Onto the Rebuttals. Human RightsHere, Pro states that capital punishment is a violation of human rights. I have two issues with this. Firstly, it seems to be that by committing a crime, and in particular a serious crime, you volitionally choose to give up your human rights. In taking away the human rights of victims, as explained in my opening argument, you exact a debt, which can be remedied only by losing your own rights. Thus a simple argument may be made that no criminal has complete human rights, not least those who take away life. Secondly, any appeal to human rights leads straight into problems, such that punishment in any form would be considered a violation. For instance, incarcerating someone at all, for any amount of time, anywhere, breaches articles 3 (esp. "liberty, and security of person"), 5, 21 (1, 2,), 23, 25 (1), and 30 of the human rights act [1]. And thus in essence, my opponent, by appealing to human rights, is stating that no punishment can be used at all for criminals. When human rights is appealed to, any punishment at all breaches human rights. This, however, is an absurd position - criminals must be punished in one way or another if not merely to perform the functions of the criminal justice system - and thus commits the fallacy of "proving too much". Innocence Here my opponent argues that the possibility that capital punishment executes innocents is reason for its abolition (though one qualm I have lies with the stats cited - viz. those exonerated, rather than those proved innocent after execution). This, I believe, is offset by the function of the death penalty as a deterrent. From a purely mathematical point of view, even if there were a small handful of innocent deaths, one can prevent a whole lot more innocent deaths as it works as a deterrent for other crimes (thus I redirect the reader to the sub-debate concerning my argument on capital punishment as deterrence). While the loss of innocent life is indeed a vice, the point is that it is morally justified even so. Provided one divorces oneself from emotivism and takes a pragmatic approach, I don't think this can be avoided. However, perhaps the most pressing issue is that Pro's argument does not entail that the death penalty should be abolished as per the resolution: at most, it suggests that it should be reformed. For, The death penalty can still exist and not execute any innocent individuals - if there are any, of course, given that the majority of the genuinely innocent on death row are exonerated anyway, as Pro points out. All that is required is a reform of the existing system. For instance, there can be more stringent hearings and evidence - with a death penalty administered only when we are indeed 100% certain, e.g. If there is video/CCTV evidence, a confession, or the like. In any case, innocent criminals - if it is even possible for such a concept to exist at all - is not reason to 'abolish' capital punishment. Prejudice Now Pro argues that since capital punishment discriminates against ethnic minorities, it should be abolished. However, it is a known fact that across all crimes, including homicide, blacks are the most common perpetrator by proportion - accounting, for instance, for 49.4% of all homicides (nonnegligent) [2] despite being 13.6% of the US population. Whites, by contrast, account for 48.2% of all homicides (nonnegligent) [3] despite being 77.7% of the population. Thus, we should not be surprised when we see a higher proportion of blacks on death row. The exact figures are 43% White and 41% Black [5]. In light of the above stats, this suggests that the death penalty is remarkably accurate - even favourable - to minority ethnics! We should thus clearly reject Pro's argument. As for the claim that "black defendants were 4 times more likely to receive a death sentence than whites.", as shown above this must be false, but in any case, can be explained by the more violent nature of black compared to white crime [4] Moreover, in addition to all this, the argument does not for one second entail that capital punishment should be abolished. At most, it suggests that it should be reformed: judges and the police should be better educated with regard to discrimination, perhaps. But racism in the CJS does not mean that it should be abolished. To the contrary, it merely needs to be reformed. Lawyers Finally, Pro claims that whether one faces death depends on the quality of one's lawyer. However, this seems impertinent to the discussion: whether your lawyer is good or not does not impact on the justification of the death penalty as argued in my opening argument - I refer the reader to the sub-debate on innocence. The point is that judges would not sentence someone to death unless the plaintiff gave sufficient evidence beyond reasonable doubt, of which, cannot be evaded in a court of law even with the best defendant there is. In any case, there have, of course, been several re-trials whereby those with incompetent lawyers have retried with new ones, thus evading the issue. Finally, again, even if true, this may be resolved by reform of the legal system and the lawyers given to those facing murder charges, rather than abolition. Conclusion I have shown why Pro's arguments fall short, especially in light of the statistics and especially when reform, rather than abolition of capital punishment is just as a viable polity. Sources:[1] http://www.un.org... [2] https://www.fbi.gov... [3] ibid [4] ibid [5] http://deathpenalty.org...