The Death Penalty should be legal in the United States

Thank you, Roy, for your response. 1+. Justice demands that the death penalty be legal My opponent has essentially defined "jusice" as popular opinion. According to him, because 64% of Americans believe that certain criminals should be killed, they should be killed. Now, I can see where the people have the right to determine some government policies, such as things funded by their tax dollars, but do they really have a right to choose to kill people? To use the population's whims is a dangerous unlimited democracy. Surely, there are things that should not be implemented even if the majority of America would desire it, such as racial discrimination or universal health care. I contend that the death penalty is among those things. My opponent points out that the Supreme Court has ensured fairness in the death penalty. However, I don't trust the Supreme Court to do anything right any further than I can throw them. Additionally, many cases regarding the death penalty were 5-4; can we really trust decisions that so easily could have gone in the opposite direciton? 2+. Execution saves innocent lives It is true that those released by the Innocence Project are not executed; however, had it not been for the independent Innocence Project, they quite likely would have been executed, and we cannot guarantee at all that the Independent Project can exonerate all innocents. I have already cited ten wrongful executions; only a few of them can be disregarded due to advances in forensics. Regarding supermax confinement, I fail to see why we even need it. My opponent has yet to cite anyone breaking out of maximum confinement; we do not need an additional and unnecessary level of security. 3+. False convictions are now extremely unlikely due to modern forensics The ten cases were, indeed, wrongful convictions, regardless of no court declarations. The source also mentions that "eight inmates have been acknowledged of their possible innocence after execution by the Death Penalty Information Center" [6]. The cases listed also demonstrate poor use of the death penalty in relying on flimsy and often bribed evidence, and it's too late to fix the mistakes. As for the CSI effect, it is irrelevant in cases with framing and bribery used to create evidence and witnesses that are difficult to expose when done correctly. Finally, "extra scrutiny" can be counted on to catch a large number of mistakes, but it cannot catch all of them. 4+. Justice should not be compromised by a very small risk of error Assuming even that the public has the right to kill off their criminals, I doubt that they would if they were told just how expensive the death penalty is. Sure, executions could be quickened and cheapened, although this would heavily sacrifice the "extra scrutiny" that is necessary to ensure few mistaken executions. Note that the $2.3 million cost was for execution over a life sentence, even after all of the trials. My opponent contests neither my math nor my source. 5+. Justice deters crime My opponent claims that Japan's low crime rate can be attributed to its use of the death penalty; how does one explain, then, the low crime rates in many US states that do not use the death penalty? Is it a correlation when it supports the death penalty, and a coincidence when it opposes? He then presents numerous sources and quotes to back up his claim, but my source [9] has an overwhelming majority of criminologists, a statistical study, and a study by the United Nations. Most compelling, perhaps, is a quote from the FBI that "[i]n no state has the number of murders diminished after legalizing the death penalty." We are not Japan or Britain, but America, and if Americans do not respond to the death penalty as a deterrent, it is useless to us. To conclude this point, execution is not a deterrent in the United States, and the lives saved from the death penalty are far too expensive; the money could be put to a much better use to save far more lives. Add the number of lives saved through the prevention of false executions. 6+. The death penalty supports plea bargaining To put this simply, I do not believe that the benefit gained from the plea bargaining bonus of the death penalty makes up for the numerous additional problems of the death penalty. 1-. The death penalty is extremely expensive to implement My opponent sources how Florida wishes to adopt Texas' methods, even though I used Texas' execution cost in my math. Additionally, the source is extremely misleading in that the reason the abolition of death penalty would not save much money is because "[p]rosecutors, public defenders and the courts would continue to cost just as much as before, although their workload would shift to other cases that now get lower priority." In this case, we would not recover the fulll cost, but instead receive more time for other cases, reducing the backlog of cases in the rest of the court so that the benefit of dropping the death penalty is actually much larger than it is made out to be. In addition, the same source points out that "[a]ccording to The Post's estimate, it is about $ 23 million cheaper, even for an inmate who is imprisoned in his 20s and dies in his 70s." That statistic is even more extreme than my own. In conclusion, the death penalty is far too expensive and will take some innocent lives in the process; the benefits of deterrence, plea bargaining and the lack of escape are extremely minimal in comparison.