Opening Statement: Aja In 1608, Captain George Kendall became the first person to be executed in the new world,

accused of spying for the Spanish crown. Thus began the long history of capital punishment in the United States. While we no longer carry out the death penalty for crimes such as stealing chickens, and we have abandoned use of the guillotine in favor of lethal injection, the premise is the same--take a life, and the government takes yours--though that doesnt make it right. The death penalty should be abolished because it violates the eighth amendment to the Constitution, places an extra burden on taxpayers, does not actually decrease the rate of violent crime, and leads to wrongful death. Arguments and Evidence: Ari Use of the death penalty is wrong for a number of reasons. For one, it violates the eighth amendment to the United States Constitution. It prohibits, among other things, the use of cruel and unusual punishment. Execution, in it of itself, will always be cruel, no matter how humane modern methods of execution may be purported to be. The United States is also in the minority among other countries--almost three-quarters of the worlds countries have abolished the death penaltyeither legally or in practiceand that makes it unusual. Secondly, use of capital punishment has not been conclusively linked to any decrease in violent crime rates. In fact, after the landmark Supreme Court case Furman v Georgia in 1972, which banned the use of the death penalty, a study by the Death Penalty Information Center showed an actual decrease in violent crimes. In 1976, after the case Gregg v Georgia reinstated the legality of capital punishment, that same rate of violent crime spiked back up to pre-Furman levels, showing that the threat of death was not at all sufficient to deter people from committing capital offenses. Additionally, use of the death penalty is taxing on the American economy. A study released by the Urban Institute in 2008 revealed that the average cost to taxpayers for a single capital case is almost $3 million. This includes pre-trial and trial costs, automatic state and federal Habeas Corpus appeals, incarceration of the convicted, and the execution itself. In an active death penalty state such as Texas, that can add up to almost $60 million per year. On the other hand, the cost of imposing a life sentence might come up to half of that. Finally, there is always the chance that false positives can be let through. In one case, a California inmate was only hours away from execution when it was postponed in order to allow an investigation into newfound evidence in the case to be held. A week later, the man was released, found to be innocent of the crime all along. Others are not so lucky. With a life sentence, a person can be freed and at least have some of their life back. With the death penalty, theres nothing that can be done. Once someone is dead, theyre dead, and theres no bringing them back. Think about it. Thank you. Cross Examination Questions: Aja

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Is the use of capital punishment cruel and unusual? Is it costiler to impose the death penalty rather than a life sentence? Has the use of the death penalty led to a noticeable decrease in violent crime? Is it possible for an innocent person to be executed? Is it is better to let ten guilty people go free before one innocent person is convicted?

Rebuttal Statement: Ari [Formulate during conference]

Closing Statement: Aja In summary, use of the death penalty is an unconstitutional, expensive, ineffective, and risky endeavour that should simply be abolished. The act of being executed will always be cruel and painful, and much of the world has abolished the death penalty--both of these prove that the continued use of capital punishment violates the eighth amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The high price tag of a death penalty trial, its associated appeals, and the execution itself make the use of the death penalty much more expensive than the imposition of a life sentence, placing an extra burden on taxpayers. The threat of death has been proven to be an inadequate deterrent to violent crime, and in some cases has led to just the opposite. And theres always the chance for an innocent person to be wrongfully executed. For these reasons, the death penalty should be put to death.