The Death Penalty should be made illegal in the USA.

For this round, I will focus solely on refuting the two weak opening contentions put forward by my oppoent. First Contention - "Innocent Executions" Claim: The US government has executed innocent people before, and should not be allowed to take this risk. Examples of innocent executions include Cameron Willingham[1], Carlos DeLuna[2], and the Meeks[3]. Fact: There isn't a single documented case of a wrongful execution in the United Statesover as Supreme Court Justice Scalia has pointed out, "not a single case-not one-in which it is clear that a person was executed for a crime he did not commit. If such an event had occurred in recent years, we would not have to hunt for it; the innocent's name would be shouted from the rooftops." Case 1) Cameron Willingham - the citation was an article in the Chicago Tribune that casted doubt on the expert testimony of arson that was part of the original trial. I would point to several articles in the Dallas Morning News that show while the arson investigation methods were outdated, they investigation by the Tribune didn't rule out arson either. This is also true in the investigation by the Texas Forensic Science Commission, which couldn't rule out arson. All these investigation did was look at the arson investigation techniques used at the time and never examined the inconsistencies in his story. (As for citation, you have to do a search in the paper's archive.) It is telling that his lawyer, David Martin, said "There was no question whatsoever that he was guilty." [1] His ex-wife, and mother to the dead children, believed he did it. [2] For me, this is a case of the media, and anti-death penalty groups, creating a false narrative that excludes the other evidence presented in the case to push an agenda. Case 2) Carlos DeLuna - the citation used is an article in the Guardian U.K. that pointed to a study by Professor James Liebman and 12 students published in the Columbia Human Rights Law Review. I would first point out that Professor Liebman is a longtime anti-death penalty advocate and there is reasons to be skeptical given his other dubious studies on the subject. Such as his study finding "serious error" in capital cases [3]. When you look at the details and the actual cases, what you find is not the unreliability of lower courts but the Supreme Court, which retroactively changes the rules. He used cases from the Rose Bird era of the California Supreme Court which an ideological justice reversed all death penalty cases and these frivolous examples are cited as examples of "reversible errors" [4]. I would also add that you should consider the politics of Columbia University where convicted cop killer and Weather Underground terrorist Kathy Boudin is an adjunct professor at Columbia University"s School of Social Work and serves as director of the school"s "Criminal Justice Initiative" [5]. The extreme politics at Columbia are well known [6]. In this case, the murder occured in 1983 and the execution was carried out in 1989 [7]. So bear in mind this study comes nearly 30 years after the crime. Carlos Deluna had only been out of prison for six weeks prior to the murder. He was convicted of improper use of a motor vehicle and attempted rape, served 3 years, paroled, and then attacked and attempted to rape the mother of a friend, which caused his parole to be revoked and he was sent back to prison [8]. Somehow attempted rape breaking several ribs of your victim doesn't qualify as a violent criminal past in the case of DeLuna according to Liebman. The story Liebman gives was that Deluna was present while another guy committed the crime and he decided his best course of action was to run a short distance and hide under a truck and just happen to have the same amount of money that was taken from the store. And this is how the testimony of the two eyewitnesses is dismissed as well. Nevermind that DeLuna testified at his trial that he was at a skating ring with Mary Ann Perales who testified that he was not with her. The lead prosecutor and one DeLuna's defense have stated that Liebman never spoke with them about the case [9]. Liebman lied [10] when he claimed there is no evidence that the store was robbed despite the fact that during trial the store owner testified about the amount of money missing, which happened to be the same amount found on DeLuna in a wad in addition to his wallet that only had two one-dollar bills. It seems a bit dubious that Hernandez bragged about the killing after DeLuna's conviction, which didn't ever come out until Liebman's investigators showed up many years later. Don't forget that even if he hadn't delievered the killing blow, under the felony-murder rule he still could have been charged and convicted and that if he had gotten life without parole, he would have died or be rotting till he died in prison. I am far from convinced this is a case of an innocent man being executed. Case 3) Thomas Griffin and Meeks Griffin - this is a case where I would have to agree that two men were wrongly executed but we're talking about a murder that occured in 1913 and I don't think a century old case is a sufficient basis to attack the criminal justice system today and further argue we end capital punishment. Claim: This system is clearly fallible and yet serves an irreversible purpose - to legally murder people. Fact: According to Justice Scalia, "[L]et"s give the professor the benefit of the doubt: let"s assume that he understated the number of innocents by roughly a factor of 10, that instead of 340 there were 4,000 people in prison who weren"t involved in the crime in any way. During that same 15 years, there were more than 15 million felony convictions across the country. That would make the error rate .027 percent"or, to put it another way, a success rate of 99.973 percent." [11] As for the argument that capital punishment is equal to "legal murder," I would counter that this is faulty moral logic. I can offer the following examples: arresting and holding a murder suspect in jail till trial doesn't draw charges of legally kidnapping people and holding them against their will. The same can be said of saying rape is the moral equivilent of sex because both end in sexual contact. This faulty logic completey denies context and is an all to common charge leveled by the anti-death penalty crowd. Claim: Should a system which allows for error, allow for the potential (and in some cases fulfilled potential) of mistakes to be made and incorporated when combined with an irreversible outcome? No - not when compared to alternatives. Fact: Well, every single human system on earth is going to have some degree of error possible and a lack of perfection is hardly a basis for abolishment. Following a conviction in a capital case, there is variance among the states, but there are 8 levels of appeal [12]. Following a trial, and a conviction, the defendant gets at automatic appeal to the State Court of Criminal Appeals. It either affirms the conviction or overturns the conviction, sentence, or both. If the court affirmed the conviction, the defendant can make a direct appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has the discretion to either hear the case or turn it down. If turned down, the defendant can then begin State Habeas Corpus proceedings with the State Court of Criminal Appeals. If denied, the defendant can begin with Federal Habeas Corpus proceedings in U.S. District Court. If denied, the defendant can the make an appeal in the U.S. Court of Appeals. If denied, the defendant can ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review. If the decision is upheld, then a defendent can seek Executive Clemency from the Governor of the state. If this fails, then the defendant awaits their execution date. This is a pretty lengthy system that affords murderers ample opportunity to fight a conviction, especially more than any murder victim was given to fight their death sentence. And that process can hardly be called potential for wrongful execution and in many cases, thanks in part to your advocacy, murderers can skirt their capital sentence. As for the alternative: consider Mr. DeLuna who you cited and if he had been convicted and sentenced to life without parole, Mr. Liebman wouldn't have studied his case and Mr. DeLuna would have sat in a prison until he died. Excuse me for objecting, but I'm having a hard time from balking at this silly moralizing - they can still be killed while in prison or serve a life term and die in prison. If imperfection and death are enough to give call for abolishment, then we could eliminate our roads and highways, which result in thousands of people dying every year. Claim: But there is also potential for death row innocence, too. As of 21st December 2012, 142 inmates on death row have been released. It is clear from this that the possibility is high that some of our criminals weren't really criminals; they would have died alone, in disgrace, and innocent. Fact: It is clear the possibility is not high; I can take your 142 inmates and use the old 2008 number of 7,000 given a death sentence since 1973 and that calculates to about 2% or a success rate of 98% - extremely low and rare. I would further dispute this list - the DPIC list equates acquittal and dismissals with actual innocence, cases reversed for legal insufficiency instead of innocence, case where evidence of guilt was excluded, defendants that were actual perpetrators/principals, and doesn't allow for review of actual innoncence [13]. At this point that 142 gets really small, but even assuming 142, in the end all you proved was that the system worked in terms of the multiple levels of appeal available to defendants. To me this just demonstrates the horribly dishonest length anti-death penalty zealots are willing to go to fabricate a case. (Due to the 10,000 limitation, I am forced to hold back my rebuttal to the second contention as well as the conclusion. Also sources.)