8th grade Amendment debates

This link will prove that since the death penalty has been placed, murder rates have gone higher. http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/deterrence-states-without-death-penalty-have-had-consistently-lower-murder-rates

Closing statement:

After all of the points we have stated I hope you understand the importance of saving one's life and that this is an irreversible action that is cruel as well as inhumane, by going con death penalty you choose to save someone, some human's life. After all, we all make mistakes, some big, some small, but in the end we all make mistakes whether these mistakes are caused by psychological problems or if we do it intentionally.. Mistakes are wrong but none are so wrong that you should take a humans life involuntarily.

There are still too many cases in where they killed an innocent person. Do you find this okay?

Jesse Tafero: Jesse Tafero was executed by electric chair in 1990 for murdering two Florida police officers, Phillip Black and Donald Irwin. The murders occurred on Feb. 20, 1976, when Black and Irwin approached a parked car at a rest stop and found Tafero, his partner Sonia “Sunny” Jacobs, her two children and Walter Rhodes asleep inside. They were ordered to get out of the car when the officers saw a gun lying on the floor inside the car and, according to Rhodes, Tafero proceeded to shoot both officers and took off in their police car. They disposed of the police car and stole a man’s car, but were arrested after being caught in a roadblock. The gun was found in Tafero’s waistband, although it was legally registered to Jacobs. Tafero had been convicted of robbery and had served seven years of a 25-year sentence before being convicted for murder. Tafero and Jacobs claimed that Rhodes was the lone shooter, but Rhodes testified against them in exchange for a lighter sentence. Rhodes later admitted that he was responsible for the killings, but Tafero was still sentenced to death.

http://www.criminaljusticedegreesguide.com/features/10-infamous-cases-of-wrongful-execution.html

This is completely unfair.

This is extremely unfair and leaves out everyone. If losing an innocent loved one is cruel, then why do you support the death penalty. The "loved one's family" would at least know that the "loved one" in alive in prison, facing the consequences of their wrong doings. Would you like to know that your loved one has done something bad and is forced to die, or would you like to know that you may still be able to visit them? You are saying that losing a loved one is bad, so why do you support the death penalty?

Our 6th point is that the death penalty is unfair to specific races.

The race of the victim and the race of the defendant in capital cases are major factors in determining who is sentenced to die in this country.

In 1990 a report from the General Accounting Office concluded that "in 82 percent of the studies [reviewed], race of the victim was found to influence the likelihood of being charged with capital murder or receiving the death penalty, i.e. those who murdered whites were more likely to be sentenced to death than those who murdered blacks."

http://deathpenalty.org/article.php?id=54

Our 5th point:

A new report by the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice has found that the death penalty costs California taxpayers $137 million dollars each year. This is a shameful waste of California's scarce public safety resources -- and our tax dollars.

The Commission concluded that replacing the death penalty with permanent imprisonment would save our state more than $125 million dollars each year.

This is money that could be spent on more effective violence prevention programs and other services that would actually make our communities safer, such child abuse prevention programs, drug and alcohol treatment, mental health care, education, and services for victims of crime. The death penalty is failed public policy, let's end the charade.

An op-ed by DPF Board Member Nancy Oliveira published in the San Francisco Chronicle yesterday explored better uses for our tax dollars. It was accompanied by an excellent chart.

http://deathpenalty.org/article.php?id=270

Our second point would be that the death penalty has been placed on many innocent people these past years. Judges are being unfair without knowing that their point is certain. In this link, the "criminal" is put to the death penalty for something that he has not done. If Claude had not been put to the death penalty, he would have more time to explain. Don't you think this is unfair? To kill an innocent person? this happens too often, and it wouldn't if the death penalty was not enforced.

http://www.criminaljusticedegreesguide.com/features/10-infamous-cases-of-wrongful-execution.html

Claude Jones: Claude Jones was executed in 2000 for the murder of liquor store owner Allen Hilzendager, in San Jacinto County in 1989. On Nov. 14, 1989, Jones and another man were seen pulling into a liquor store in Point Blank, Texas. One stayed in the car while the other went inside and shot the owner. Witnesses who were standing across the road couldn’t see the killer, but Jones and two other men, Kerry Dixon and Timothy Jordan, were all linked to the murder. Although Jones said he never entered the store, Dixon and Jordan testified that Jones was in fact the shooter and they were both spared the death penalty. The deciding factor and only admissible evidence in Jones’ conviction came down to a strand of hair that was found at the scene of the crime. A forensic expert testified that the hair appeared to have come from Jones, and he was sentenced to death. Forensic technology was underdeveloped during the 1990 trial and it wasn’t able to match Jones’ DNA with the hair sample. Therefore, before his 2000 execution, Jones’attorneys filed petitions for a stay of execution with a district court and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and requested that the hair be submitted for DNA testing that was now possible, but all courts and former Texas Governor George W. Bush denied Jones and he was executed. In an attempt to prove that Texas executed an innocent man, the Innocence Project and the Texas Observer filed a lawsuit in 2007 to obtain the strand of hair and submitted it for DNA testing, which was determined to be the hair of the victim.

So what you are basically saying is that the criminals should be put to death instead of suffering the consequences of their wrong-doings? Like we said in our opening statement, suffering a long time in prison would be more effective on the wrong-doer because they would then learn from their mistakes and other people would know the consequences as well so there would be less murders or wrong doings in our world. If the death penalty is enforced, the criminal would not have to suffer at all, they would just have to face death, which is not a punishment that someone could learn from.

Our first point would be that executing a criminal is not humane whatsoever. It is the exact same thing as executing humans. In fact, you make criminals seem different than humans, while they are not. Is it humane to kill a human? It is not humane to kill anyone. So what is your point?

You know it guuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurrrrrrrrrrrrrrllllllllllllllllllllllll ;) <3