As of now, 25 states have preempted the federal government in banning the death

penalty. States like Florida that haven’t explicitly outlawed the practice have seen a
substantial decline in executions falling more than 90% from the 1990s, this evidence
proves that the aff is an unnecessary step

The DP is not racist or unconstitutional, it is applied to individuals who commit

heinous crimes, therefore those who commit the crimes will be punished

There is no racial bias—those stats are the result of the ideologies of researchers—
researchers morally opposed to the death penalty concede this.
Walsh and Hatch ‘17 [Anthony Walsh (Boise State University) and Virginia Hatch (Boise State
University), “Ideology, Race, and the Death Penalty: “Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics” in Advocacy
Research”, Journal of Ideology: Vol. 37 : No. 1 , Article 2, 01-31-2017, Accessible Online at
https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1006&context=ji] KL 6-28-2020

Nevertheless, a
number of statements expressed with “incredible certitude” about race and the
disproportionate application of the death penalty and illustrating “media overreach” are shown below from various organizations and
authors: “African Americans are disproportionately represented among people condemned to death in the USA. While they make up 12 percent of the national
population, they account for more than 40 percent of the country’s current death row inmates, and one in three of those executed since 1977” (Amnesty
International, 2003). “Approximately 35% of those executed since 1976 have been black, even though blacks constitute only 12% of the population. The odds of
receiving a death sentence are nearly four times higher if the defendant is black than if he or she is white” (American Civil Liberties Union, nd). “The national death-
row population is roughly 42 percent black, while the U.S. population overall is only 13.6 percent black, according to the latest census. We’ve long known that the
death penalty disproportionately kills people of color” (Matt Ford in The Atlantic, June, 23rd, 2014). “Last week was the 35th anniversary of the return of the
American death penalty. It remains as racist and as random as ever” (David Dow in The New York Times, July 8th , 2011). “[E]ven if it were clear that blacks and non-
black defendants were treated fairly and consistently in America’s death-sentencing system, there are also concerns about the substantial overrepresentation of
blacks on death row in America (13 percent of the nation’s civilian population versus 42 percent of the death row population)” (Acker, Bohm & Lanier, 2014:531).
These claims are true on their face; the statistics are accurate, but the interpretation is bogus, and
constitute examples of what Joel Best (2001, p. 62) call "mutant statistics." Neil Gilbert (1998, p. 102) calls such statements examples
of "advocacy research" that purposely paints the grimmest of pictures to force fence-sitters to take notice. According to the
latest information for the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) (2015), African-Americans have been between 11% and 13% of the U. S. population between
1976 and 2015, and have constituted 35% of the executions. Likewise, blacks comprise 42% of current U.S. death row inmates. Thus, since the resumption of
executions in 1976, blacks have been overrepresented relative to their proportion of the general population by roughly 3 to 1 in terms of executions and as death
row residents. As we have seen from the statements above, this is almost always taken by the media (as well as some
academics) as clear evidence that the death penalty is still biased against African-Americans. The
disproportionality argument is repeated mantra-like without giving any serious thought to the logic
behind it because it produces a comfortable fit with the ideological views of death penalty opponents,
including those of the present authors. We rarely seek to question something that slots comfortably into our ideology because to do so may
lead us to question other positions located under the same umbrella and produce cognitive dissonance. Indeed, we unthinkingly accepted this

view ourselves until we spent more than two years researching the death penalty for our book and received
abundant feedback from at least 16 reviewers (Hatch & Walsh, 2016). Of course, as we know from our first exposure to statistics but sometimes forget, claims of
disproportionality cannot be evaluated by comparing different things. The
percentages of each race executed or on death row
must be compared with the percentage of each race eligible to be included in those sub-populations,
and not with their proportion of the general population. To assess this claim logically we have to
compare each race’s proportion of murderers with its proportion executed or on death row. Social scientists (and
the DPIC) are well aware of this, but rarely make this awareness explicit, and perhaps cannot even
acknowledge it to themselves in the Kuhnian (1970) sense of not “seeing at all.” If we assess racial differences among the
people on death row with the correct target population in mind, a very different picture emerges. In 2013, 52.2% of individuals arrested for

murder in the United States were African-Americans and 47.8% were white (FBI, 2014). The FBI places Hispanics and non-
Hispanic whites into a single “White” category (93% of Hispanics-Latinos are defined as white) in its Uniform Crime Reports (UCR), so we cannot make direct
black/white comparisons between UCR and DPIC statistics. The inclusion of Hispanics in the white category inflates white crime figures because Hispanics have a
higher crime rate than non-Hispanic whites (Steffensmeier et al., 2010). Steffensmeier and his colleagues (2010) calculated that when Hispanics are taken out of the
white category, the black homicide rate averages 12.7 times higher than the white rate. Fox and Levin (2001) find that African-Americans
are
overrepresented in every homicide category, ranging from 66.7% of drug-related homicides to 27.2% of workplace homicides, and the
Radford University’s Serial Killer Information Center (Aamodt, 2015) finds that African-Americans have been 57.9% of serial killers in the U.S. from 2000 to 2014;
whites 34%, Hispanics 7.9%, and Asian Americans 0.06%. With these data in mind, we should formulate a much different
perspective on the disproportionality statements that we see in both the popular media and in scholarly works. A comparison of
homicide and execution/death row data led Matt Robinson (2008) to the conclusion in his work on the death penalty that: “ Although they are

overrepresented among death row populations and executions relative to their share of the U.S.
population, blacks are underrepresented based on their arrests and convictions for murder” (p. 191). This
raises the question of why the perception is the opposite of the reality. The Origins of the Conventional Wisdom The history of race relations in

the United States is painfully disturbing. African-Americans have been treated badly from the time that
the first African slaves landed in America in 1619 until relatively recently . In terms of the death penalty, in Virginia, slaves
could be convicted of 66 crimes carrying the death penalty at one point, and free blacks could be executed for rape into the 20th century; only murder carried the
death penalty for whites (Bohm, 2012). Blacks were subjected to such laws under slavery for over 200 years, and after emancipation they were subjected to the
Black Codes, Jim Crow laws, disenfranchisement, “separate but equal” statutes, literacy tests, vicious stereotypes, and lynch mobs (Walsh & Hemmens, 2014).
Those who are aware of this history have a tendency to examine modern racial issues in its context, and
find it difficult to imagine that the death penalty can be administered in a racially neutral way and to take racial
bias in capital cases for granted. For others, history is just that— history, and that in this modern age things have changed dramatically in the United States.

Extend 1nc – The states can circumvent the plan, Texas was able to continue
executions of people with intellectual disabilities even though the supreme court
explicitly banned it

States won’t comply – they’ll re-write the laws.

Sarat et. al. ‘20 [Austin D. Sarat is the Associate Dean of Faculty and William Nelson Cromwell
Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College. "After Abolition: Acquiescence,
Backlash, and the Consequences of Ending the Death Penalty."
https://repository.uchastings.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
article=1003&context=hastings_journal_crime_punishment]

However, such predictions

were quickly proven wrong.10 Maurice Chammah of the Marshal Project reports that “[t]he
backlash to Furman was swift and furious, as state legislatures scrambled to rewrite their laws to satisfy
the [C]ourt’s concern that the punishment was arbitrary.”11 It was only a matter of days after the Court’s
decision before five states announced that they intended to reinstate the death penalty.12 As renowned
death-penalty scholars Carol S. Steiker and Jordan M. Steiker note, “The backlash in the early 1970s depended largely on the view that new
energy and attention to the death penalty could rescue it from its manifest and manifold problems.”13 By May 1973, thirteen states had
reinstated the death penalty and by 1976 that number increased to thirty-five.14 The adverse reaction to Furman was also
reflected in public opinion. Three months before the decision, 42% of Americans said they were opposed to
the death penalty. Four months after Furman, opposition to the death penalty had fallen to 32%.15 By 1976,
death penalty support reached a twenty-five year high of 66%.16 Backlash against Furman culminated with the
Supreme Court’s 1976 decision in Gregg v. Georgia, which held that capital punishment did not violate the 8th and 14th amendments in all
circumstances.17 Of course, Furman
was not the only mid-twentieth century Supreme Court decision to
provoke backlash. To take another prominent example, there is substantial scholarly literature analyzing backlash after the 1973 Roe v.
Wade decision,18 in which the Supreme Court held that the Constitution protected abortion rights. Examining public discourse following Roe,
political science professor Vincent Vecera found that “the Court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade played a critical role in transforming how Americans
think and talk about abortion.”19 Other scholars claim that Roe helped galvanize a previously dormant anti-abortion movement. Longtime
Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse and Yale legal historian Reva Siegal note
that “One effect of Roe was to
mobilize a permanent constituency for criminalizing abortion.”20 Additionally, after Roe, Congress
passed the first limits on abortion funding,21 and many state legislatures enacted restrictions on
abortion.22 These actions were taken despite general public support for Roe. 23

Extend 1nc – You shouldn’t give them dignity spill over, its empirically wrong. don’t
assume the death penalty is key to dignity

Strengthening dignity is not enough – overcoming incapacitation as a penal rationale

is a pre-requisite to rejecting retribution
Simon ‘12 (Jonathan Simon, Jonathan Simon is a professor of law at UC Berkeley and faculty director
of the Center for the Study of Law & Society. "Life without Parole: America's New Death Penalty?"
(Chapter 8: Dignity and Risk), NYU Press,
https://muse-jhu-edu.proxy.lib.umich.edu/chapter/725357/pdf, 2012, Accessed 6-20-2020 via Umich
Libraries) //ILake-JQ

But if the absence of dignity as a central legal value is both implicated and reinforced by an extreme
version of incapacitation as a penal rationale, it will take more than a strengthening of dignity within
the law to overcome degrading punishments such as LWOP. This is not an argument for abandoning court challenges to
LWOP, three strikes, and other extreme sentences. Indeed, the availability and likely expansion of judicial forums to hear these claims is one of
the best opportunities at present to wage a broader cultural struggle against total incapacitation. Such
challenges enable a rare
break in the public presentation of incapacitation as sanitary and effective , and provide a unique space
in which to reintroduce a discourse of morality and justice into talk about punishment. But they will
have their greatest effect when they can draw parallels with developments in our social and legal
culture in which risk and dignity are being reconfigured to place fear under a stronger value of dignity .
It is the growing strength of several such areas which provides me optimism that the road to a legal end of LWOP need not be a lifetime away.
Extend 1nc – If the death penalty is abolished – inmates will be subjected to life
without parole which is even more cruel and unusual than the death penalty.
Life without parole means being in a prison for the rest of your existence with no
chance of seeing the outside world, its no wonder that many criminals have chosen
the death penalty over this cruel practice

This is an independent reason you can vote neg – if the plan is passed then all
prisoners who were once on death row will now just have to suffer life without parole
which is extremely undignified and harsh

Public pressures ensure replacement with LWOP

Williams, 17 --- Professor of Law, South Texas College of Law (Kenneth, “Why and How the Supreme
Court Should End the Death Penalty,” 51 U.S.F. L. Rev. 271, Nexis Uni via Umich Libraries, JMP)

ii. Life Without Parole In

the past, jurors often voted for death in order to ensure that dangerous defendants
remained in jail and were never released on [*284] parole. 98 Now that most states provide jurors with the
option of sentencing the defendant to life without parole ("LWOP"), this concern is eliminated. As a result, jurors are
meting out fewer death sentences 99 and the public seems to agree with those decisions. In a recent poll, 52% of the public
preferred LWOP, whereas 42% preferred the death penalty. 100 Even among those who support the
death penalty, 29% preferred LWOP. The public is increasingly unwilling to accept the risk of executing
an innocent person now that they are assured that the perpetrator will never be released from prison.

Life without parole lacks the heightened review procedures available in death
sentence procedures and proves they can’t embrace dignity
Malkani ‘18 (Bharat Malkani, Bharat Malkani researches and teaches in the field of capital
punishment, and human rights and criminal justice more broadly. He is a member of the International
Academic Network for the Abolition of Capital Punishment, and prior to joining academia he helped co-
ordinate efforts to abolish the death penalty for persons under the age of 18 in America. "Slavery and
the Death Penalty A Study in Abolition", Routledge, 2019, Accessed 6-25-2020) //ILake-JQ

We saw in Chapter Five that the restrictions on the use of capital punishment are designed to ensure that death
sentences are only imposed when such sentences are considered proportionate to the gravity of the
crime and the moral culpability of the offender. We also saw, though, that the Court has not applied the same
proportionality analysis to non-capital cases. Sentences of life without parole are therefore available for
a wide range of offenses including non-violent property offenses. In 2005, the US Supreme Court outlawed the death
penalty categorically for offenders under the age of 18, but such persons can still be sentenced to life without parole in 31 states, if convicted of
murder.68 In fact, as noted above, legislators in Texas specifically introduced LWOP in 2005 in order to ensure that the young offenders spared
from execution under Roper v. Simmons would never be eligible for parole.69 And, as Marie Gottschalk has documented, “[i]n
a pattern
familiar in other states, the list of qualifying crimes for LWOP expanded in Texas” after it was introduced
in 2005.70 In addition to the lack of any rigorous proportionality analysis, LWOP is also free from individualized
sentencing procedures, except in cases involving juveniles. In Woodson v. North Carolina, the US Supreme Court explained why death
sentences must be individualized. Defendants, the Court ruled, must be allowed to introduce mitigating evidence in order to ensure that only
the most morally depraved are executed. And in Hurst v. Florida, the
Court explained that death sentences could only be
imposed by a jury, and not by a judge.71 When we look at LWOP schemes around the country, though,
we see mandatory schemes abound. Even in some jurisdictions where the penalty is not mandatory, we see the potential
for individuals to be sentenced to LWOP at the discretion of a judge rather than a jury . Consider, for
example, the schemes in the seven jurisdictions that have outlawed capital punishment since 2007. In
five of these states, LWOP is mandatory for some crimes. In Connecticut, in 2012, a jury-imposed, discretionary
death penalty for “capital felonies” was replaced with a mandatory LWOP for offenses of “murder with special
circumstances.”72 When the Delaware Supreme Court invalidated the state’s death penalty, it left LWOP as the
only punishment available upon a finding of guilt for capital crimes. In Illinois, which abolished the death
penalty in 2011, LWOP is mandatory when certain aggravating factors are found, as is the case in New Mexico and New
York. Even though LWOP is not mandatorily imposed in Maryland, which abolished the death penalty in 2013, it is
nonetheless a decision for a judge to make, rather than a unanimous jury. In addition to the mandatory application
of LWOP in some states, such sentences also lack the sort of procedural safeguards that are applicable in
capital cases to ensure that convictions are free from error. Thus, when anti-death penalty advocates encourage the
use of LWOP on the grounds that it is a cheaper punishment, they are by implication contributing to what Gottschalk calls “the carceral state”,
because prisoners sentenced to LWOP will have less chance of having their sentence reviewed or overturned. In this sense, we can draw
parallels with David Walker’s criticism of the American Colonization Society. Walker suggested that the true motives of the ACS were to
strengthen the subjugation of black people by removing those who worked most hard for abolition and equality. While
it might be
implausible to argue that anti-death penalty advocates who champion LWOP are purposively
entrenching harsh punishments, the underlying concern is comparable: such an “alternative” has the
effect of subjugating the very people it is supposed to help. In some respects, if you are innocent it is better
to be sentenced to death and take advantage of the heightened review procedures available, than it is
to be sentenced to a lesser-reviewed sentence of LWOP . By advocating for the imposition of LWOP in its current form
(that is, without heightened procedural safeguards), anti-death penalty advocates are normalizing and institutionalizing harsh retributivism.
Consider, for example, the
reversal rate for capital cases. It currently stands at 68 percent, because of the
heightened review procedures. In non-capital cases – including LWOP – the reversal rate is between 10–
20 percent, in part due to the relatively weaker safeguards and fewer opportunities for review.73 Capital
defendants currently have a right to have their case reviewed by the state’s highest court; but non-capital defendants – even those serving a
term of LWOP – do not. Also, as noted above, if a prosecutor wishes to rely on “future dangerousness” as a reason for seeking a death
sentence, the jury must be informed of the availability of LWOP as an alternative punishment.74 In other words, the defendant benefits from
the jury being informed of alternative, allegedly lesser, punishments. However, in
cases where LWOP is the maximum
available sentence, juries are not required to be told of alternatives. Thus, there is more scope for a jury
to be inclined to sentence someone to LWOP, unaware that there is a less harsh, but just as effective,
alternative available.75 The endorsement of LWOP can also contribute to the institutionalization of
racism in the criminal justice system. For example, North Carolina’s Racial Justice Act, which has now been repealed, mandated
the replacement of a death sentence with a sentence of life without parole in cases in which a prisoner successfully showed that race had
impermissibly played a role in the imposition of their death sentence. As a result, it gave legitimacy to sentences of LWOP in cases that had
been affected by racial prejudice. Death penalty abolitionists who criticize life without parole have also pointed to the counter-productivity of
those who endorse such sentences, either for moral or strategic purposes. Such sentences are often touted as cheaper than death sentences,
but Roger Hood and Carolyn Hoyle highlight the “enormous cost implications of housing increasing numbers of elderly people in prisons who
will inevitably need medical and geriatric care.”76 Perhaps more startling than the substantive and procedural shortcomings of LWOP,
though, is the observation that even if there has been some decrease in the use of capital punishment as
a result of the use of LWOP, this is nothing compared to the increased use of LWOP instead of lesser
punishments. That is, it is arguable that people who would ordinarily have been sentenced to a term of
imprisonment with the possibility of parole have instead been sentenced to LWOP as the latter has
become acceptable. Ashley Nellis has found that “[b]etween 1992 and 2016, there was a 12.7 percent increase
in the number of people on death row while over the same period the LWOP population rose 328
percent.”77 It is highly unlikely that all those sentenced to LWOP in that period would have been
sentenced to death had the former not been available, and as Carol Steiker and Jordan Steiker note, “…even if the
entire decline in death sentencing were (implausibly) attributed to LWOP , the number of capital
defendants affected by LWOP’s introduction would still be dwarfed by the number of noncapital
defendants affected by its widespread adoption and use.”78 That is, even if the promotion of LWOP has led to a small
decline in death sentences, this has been nothing compared to the startling increased use of LWOP instead of lesser sentences. In Nellis’s
words: “LWOP’s
widespread use in both capital and noncapital crimes has had a normalizing effect on
extreme sentences and places an upward pressure on sentences across the spectrum. ”79 Indeed, as of 2016,
nearly half of all LWOP sentences have been passed in just four states. Florida accounts for 16.7 percent of all LWOP sentences; Pennsylvania
10.1 percent , California 9.6 percent , and Louisiana 9.1 percent .80 All except Louisiana also appear in the list of the five most populous death
rows.81 Toparaphrase William Lloyd Garrison, then, “the [promotion or acceptance of LWOP] is inadequate in
its design, injurious in its operation, and contrary to sound principle.”82 It is inadequate because it fails to
account for the problems inherent in LWOP in its current form; it is injurious because it has normalized the use of such sentences in cases that
might have otherwise attracted lesser sentences, and subjects
people to a lifetime behind bars with no hope of
release; and it is contrary to principle because it normalizes and institutionalizes the belief that some
people can be permanently excluded from the human community, which is the very wrong that death
penalty abolitionists are trying to eradicate in the first place.

Extend 1nc – The death penalty deters crime, our evidence uses conclusive empirical
analysis to come to the conclusion that the Death penalty is a deterrent, our evidence
is from qualified university researchers, so our evidence is more concrete
The death penalty conclusively deters crime – a review of the literature confirms each
execution deters 18 murders
Muhlhausen ‘14 [David B. Muhlhausen is a research fellow for the Center for Data Analysis at The
Heritage Foundation. "Civil Society How the Death Penalty Saves Lives." https://www.heritage.org/civil-
society/commentary/how-the-death-penalty-saves-lives]

Studies of the death penalty have reached various conclusions about its effectiveness in deterring crime. But
a 2008 comprehensive review of capital punishment research since 1975 by Drexel University economist Bijou Yang
and psychologist David Lester of Richard Stockton College of New Jersey concluded that the majority of studies that track
effects over many years and across states or counties find a deterrent effect. Indeed, other recent
investigations, using a variety of samples and statistical methods, consistently demonstrate a strong link between
executions and reduced murder rates. For instance, a 2003 study by Emory University researchers of data from
more than 3,000 counties from 1977 through 1996 found that each execution, on average, resulted in
18 fewer murders per county. In another examination, based on data from all 50 states from 1978 to
1997, Federal Communications Commission economist Paul Zimmerman demonstrated that each state execution
deters an average of 14 murders annually. A more recent study by Kenneth Land of Duke University and
others concluded that, from 1994 through 2005, each execution in Texas was associated with "modest, short-
term reductions" in homicides, a decrease of up to 2.5 murders. And in 2009, researchers found that
adopting state laws allowing defendants in child murder cases to be eligible for the death penalty was
associated with an almost 20 percent reduction in rates of these crimes.
Empirically proven to decrease homicide levels.
Cassell ’8 (Paul G. Cassell, Professor of Law at the University of Utah- S.J. Quinney College of Law, “In
Defense of the Death Penalty,” IACJ Journal, Summer 2008, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?
abstract_id=2181453) -LH

A final support for the death penalty’s deterrent effect comes from statistical analysis.23 Abolitionists appear to have little time for
investigating this issue. When they trouble to investigate the issue, they typically do
little more than assert that the states
without the death penalty have lower homicide rates than states with the penalty . Bright’s chapter in Debating
the Death Penalty can serve as a convenient illustration. Bright quickly dismisses the possibility of a deterrent effect with the factoid that the
South has the highest murder rate in the country while the Northwest, with the fewest executions, has the lowest.24 This analysis is
fundamentally flawed. It fails to account for a variety of regional differences—e.g., educational levels, criminal justice
expenditures, economic prosperity—that are well known to have potential affects on homicide levels.25 Indeed, Bright’s
observation may prove little more than that the states that most need death penalty laws have been the
ones most likely to pass them. A far better measure of a deterrent effect comes from measuring the
experience of states with death penalty laws over time. Thus, we might compare what various states’ murder rates were
from 1968 to 1976 (a period of time in which no one was executed) with what they were during the years 1995–2000. Senator Hatch and other
senators recently collected the relevant data.26 The five states showing the greatest relative improvements are, in
order: Georgia, South Carolina, Florida, Delaware, and Texas. All these states have
aggressive application of the death
penalty. Another way of reviewing the data over time is to compare a state’s 1999 murder rate to those of 1966, the most recent year in
which the national homicide rate equaled that of 1999. In 1999, the national homicide rate had fallen to 5.7 per 100,000 persons, a 32- year low
and the lowest rate since 1966. If death-penalty states had simply followed the national trend in recent years, one would expect that in 1999,
they and the non-death-penalty states would all have returned to the low rates they experienced in 1966. But the
data reveals a
strikingly different pattern: states aggressively using the death penalty have generally seen their
murder rates decline while states not using the penalty have generally seen rates increase The six leading
states measured by total executions are, in order: Texas, Virginia, Missouri, Florida, Oklahoma, and Georgia. Obviously this way of comparing
states is biased against the smaller states. An alternative yardstick is to examine the rate of executions per murders in each state. By this
measure— executions per total murders since 1976—the most aggressive death penalty state in the country is Delaware, followed by
Oklahoma, Missouri, Texas, Virginia, and Arkansas. Taking the eight states that show up on either of these two lists, six have seen their murder
rates drop since 1966. Arkansas’ murder rate is down by 1.5 percentage points, Virginia’s by 2.4 points, Texas by 3.0 points, Georgia’s by 3.8
points, Florida’s by 4.6 points and Delaware’s by 5.8 points. The only states whose murder rates went up—Oklahoma and Missouri—went up by
only 1.4 and 1.2 points respectively. Of the six states with declining murder rates (Arkansas, Virginia, Texas, Georgia, Florida, and Delaware), the
period between 1997 and 1999 saw all six reach their lowest murder rate since 1960. Indeed, four of these states—Virginia, Florida, Delaware,
and Arkansas—went from having murder rates well-above the national average in 1966 to rates well-below the average in 1999. In
contrast
to the general declines in the leading death penalty states, the largest abolitionist states have seen
rising homicide rates. Among non-death penalty states, nine are large enough to have two congressmen, and have no wild swings in
murder rates from year to year. These states are Wisconsin, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Iowa, Michigan, West Virginia, Rhode Island, and
Hawaii. Of these, six have seen their murder rates go up since 1966 (Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, West Virginia, Rhode Island, and Hawaii);
one has stayed the same (Maine); and two have seen slight reductions (Massachusetts by 0.4 of a percentage point and Iowa by 0.1 point).
These state-by-state comparisons are bolstered by more sophisticated and recent econometric analysis
that controls for the variety of demographic, economic, and other variables that differ among the states. The best of these studies
suggest that the death penalty has an incremental deterrent effect over imprisonment: in plainer terms, the
death penalty saves innocent lives.
2nc – No Innocent Death Add-On
Capital punishment is key to condemning unquestionably guilty killers – outweighs a
negligible risk of killing innocents
Broughton, 17 --- Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law in
Detroit, Michigan, J. Richard (2017, "The Death Penalty and Justice Scalia's Lines," Akron Law Review:
Vol. 50 : Iss. 2 , Article 2. Available at:
http://ideaexchange.uakron.edu/akronlawreview/vol50/iss2/2)//MP
Claims regarding the constitutionality of the death penalty—an issue once thought settled after the Court’s 1976 decision in Gregg v. Georgia50
—are making a comeback. There is even a movement among American conservatives to abolish capital punishment, which, though small today,
should be taken seriously by every death penalty supporter.51 It is a needle-moving effort. Abolition talk is alive and well. This is despite the
fact, as Scalia and others on the Court repeatedly reminded us, that the Constitution expressly acknowledges the existence of capital
punishment.52 Of course, whether its use violates the Eighth Amendment may be a separate matter,53 and its recognition in the Fifth
Amendment is not conclusive of its validity as to all applications; rather, its recognition in the Fifth Amendment should be a critical factor in
determining whether any application of capital punishment is constitutionally permissible. Moreover, abolition talk is increasingly fashionable
despite public opinion remaining supportive of capital punishment,54 and despite the fact that a clear majority of American jurisdictions still
maintain the death penalty.55 Claims that the death penalty is per se unconstitutional also persist despite the reality that abolition
would
mean concluding that the Constitution forbids applying the death penalty to any defendant—no matter how
heinous, cruel, or depraved the defendant’s crime, no matter how strong the evidence against him, and no
matter how powerful the aggravators or how weak the mitigators.56 Arguments for invalidating the
death penalty also rely substantially upon claims about the risk of executing innocents.57 Those are, of course, powerful claims.
But they do not explain why every death sentence should be forbidden . The risk of executing innocents is
simply not the same in every capital case. In some cases, the risk is negligible, or even non-existent. 58
Moreover, opposing imposition of the death penalty upon an innocent person tells us very little about
the proper punishment for a guilty person. Why should the risk of executing innocents impede the
execution of, for example, an unquestionably guilty killer like Timothy McVeigh or Dzokhar Tsarnaev? Political life brings risks,
risks that sometimes unfortunately implicate innocents. The political community can decide whether to tolerate those risks.59 But it often does
(for example, in war, in policing, or in defining the law of self-defense).

Ending the death penalty doesn’t stop innocents from being convicted --- it actually
INCREASES the likelihood that claims of innocence will be canvassed
Steiker, 14 --- Professor at the University of Texas School of Law (Fall 2014, Jordan, “PANEL THREE: THE
WISDOM OF CAPITAL PUNISHMENT (APART FROM MORALITY OR THE RISK OF CONVICTING THE
INNOCENT): THE AMERICAN DEATH PENALTY FROM A CONSEQENTIALIST PERSPECTIVE,” 47 Tex. Tech L.
Rev. 211, Nexis Uni via Umich Libraries, JMP)
Before moving forward, I will offer a brief comment on suspending concerns relating to convicting and executing the innocent. This concern has undoubtedly
contributed significantly to the decline in support for and use of capital punishment over the past fifteen years. I remain something of a skeptic
about the strength of the argument from innocence (in comparison to other anti-death-penalty or pro-repeal claims). 12 In particular, I
regard the argument as rooted in an overly optimistic view about the error-correcting potential of our
criminal-justice system. That claim might sound odd because the argument from innocence appears to rest on the fallibility of human endeavors,
including the administration of criminal punishment. But, lurking beneath the argument from innocence is the somewhat

naive view that without the death penalty, significant errors and false convictions would be
discovered and corrected. So, the argument goes, if someone is sentenced to life imprisonment rather
than death, there is always the possibility of vindication. What this view ignores is the disturbing fact that
non-death-sentenced inmates rarely have any meaningful review of their convictions . 13 They lack
lawyers to investigate and present "newly-discovered" evidence in state and federal postconviction
proceedings, and fundamental errors, including wrongful conviction, are unlikely to come to light . 14 In
fact, the presence of the death penalty seems to increase the likelihood that claims of innocence will be

canvassed. 15 More resources, judicial attention, and public concern flow to claims of innocence
asserted by condemned inmates than to those asserted by inmates merely facing lengthy
confinement. 16[*214] I do not wish to understate the horror of executing the innocent, nor do I want to understate the horror of lengthy-in most cases
lifetime-incarceration for persons wrongfully convicted of murder but not sentenced to death. In sheer numbers, this is a much larger group; it seems to me a
complicated empirical question whether the presence of the death penalty leads to more or less "wrongful punishment" over the long term.

Framing

Magnitude should come first in this debate, we’ll concede that every life has value,
this means you should try to prevent high magnitude events at all costs because they
have the potential to result in the highest amount of deaths

You should weigh the lives of innocent people over criminals and vote neg