The Death Penalty Should Be Replaced by Life Imprisonment

Thank you to Mall for accepting this debate.

I intend to demonstrate why the death penalty should be abolished through the following fronts:

There have been 200 exonerations since 1973. Even with the many appeals, the rate of error is estimated to be slightly over four percent, even with our advanced forensics technology human error is unavoidable. Though small, it's an unacceptable number when it comes to human life. The death of innocent people can be avoided all together with life imprisonment.

There is variation from state to state, but it's a widespread truth that the cost of the death penalty is several fold that of the life sentence. Due to the process of appeals the death penalty costs millions of dollars, which is about ten times as much as life imprisonment costs. The purpose of criminal justice is to defend the public, though the death penalty harms the public through unnecessary financial stress. Justice should save lives, not drain resources, but in this case, it drains resources and destroys lives.

3.) The Death Penalty is Hypocritical and Unnecessary
There is no reason an individual violating a rule of morality gives the government justification to also violate that rule. There are some cases where killing can be justified, as it was during the resistance of Hitler in WWII, however the death penalty does have a peaceful alternative that doesn't commit the very crime being condemned. We should not try to protect the sanctity and value of life through taking it away, we should not prove killing is wrong with more killing.

            

If we have a cheaper, safer, more humane and non-hypocritical alternative, why do we insist on keeping the death penalty?