VALUE: SOCIETAL GOOD
1. Michael Kronenwetter, Capital Punishment: A Reference Handbook. cc. 1993, pg.29
"California would save $91 million a year by getting rid of the death penalty.'
-- Sacramento Bee Newspaper
CRITERIA: PRAGMATISM
1. Michael Kronenwetter, Capital Punishment: A Reference Handbook. cc. 1993, pg. 29
"The actual cost of executions, the cost of operating the super-maximum security
condemned unit, the years spent by some inmates in condemned status, and a pro-rate
share of top-level prison officials' time spent in administering the units, add up to a
cost substantially greater than the cost to retain them in prison the rest of their lives."
-- a one-time administrator of the California prisons
2. Michael Kronenwetter, Capital Punishment: A Reference Handbook. cc. 1993, pg. 21
"Even today, the four states that make the most use of the death penalty are
consistently among those with the highest murder rates."
3. Michael Kronenwetter, Capital Punishment: A Reference Handbook. cc. 1993, pg. 20
"[statistical studies] have in general failed to identify any meaningful correlation between
the precedence of the death penalty and rates of serious criminality."
-- The International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences report on statistical studies
on capital punishment
CONTENTION ONE: CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IS INEFFICIENT
1. Michael Kronenwetter, Capital Punishment: A Reference Handbook. cc. 1993. pg. 20
"There is no measurable relation between the existence or non-existence of capital
punishment and the homicide rate."
-- American Professor Raymond T. Bye on his results in statistical study on c.p.
2. Michael Kronenwetter, Capital Punishment: A Reference Handbook. cc. 1993. pg. 53
"Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but
similars that breed their kind."
-- George Bernard Shaw
3. Issues and Controversies on File, Vol.3, No. 9, May 1, 1998 "Death Penalty"
"The leading cause of death among death-row inmates is not the electric chair
or lethal injection but natural causes.
4. Jack Greenburg, Law Professor, "Against the American System of Capital Punishment."
Taking Sides, 5th Edition, cc. 1993
"Between 1967 and 1980, death sentences or convictions were reversed for 1889 of the
2402 people on death row, a reversal rate of nearly 80%.
5. Hays, Scott, Capital Punishment: Troubled Society Series. pg. 23, cc. 1990
"[that we may] assume safely that . . . the threat of death has little or no deterrent effect
[on murderers] who act in passion."
-- 1976 U.S. Supreme Court Statement in Gregg vs. Georgia
6. Michael Kronenwetter, Capital Punishment: A Reference Handbook. cc. 1993, pgs. 18-19
"Cruelty and viciousness are not abolished by cruelty and viciousness, not even by legalized
cruelty and viciousness."
-- William Randolph Hearst, publisher
7. Michael Kronenwetter, Capital Punishment: A Reference Handbook. cc. 1993. pg. 25
"The United Kingdom Royal Commission on Capital Punishment which looked into
recidivism rates among murderers in the United Kingdom and Europe, found almost
no repeat offenders among murderers. An even more sweeping American study covered all the
released murderers in 12 states from the turn of the century up to 1976. Of 2,646 killers released
from prison during that time for any reason, only 16 ever returned for committing another
murder- barely more than one half of one half of one percent."
8. Michael Kronenwetter, Capital Punishment: A Reference Handbook. cc. 1993, pg. 29
"The actual cost of executions, the cost of operating the super-maximum security
condemned unit, the years spent by some inmates in condemned status, and a pro-rate
share of top-level prison officials' time spent in administering the units, add up to a
cost substantially greater than the cost to retain them in prison the rest of their lives."
-- a one-time administrator of the California prisons
9. Michael Kronenwetter, Capital Punishment: A Reference Handbook. cc. 1993, pg. 21
"Even today, the four states that make the most use of the death penalty are
consistently among those with the highest murder rates."
10. Michael Kronenwetter, Capital Punishment: A Reference Handbook. cc. 1993, pg. 20
"[statistical studies] have in general failed to identify any meaningful correlation between
the precedence of the death penalty and rates of serious criminality."
-- The International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences report on statistical studies
on capital punishment
CONTENTION TWO: CAPITAL PUNISHMENT DEVALUES HUMAN LIFE.
1. Michael Kronenwetter, Capital Punishment: A Reference Handbook. cc. 1993, pg. 1
"How can the government of a civilized society claim the right to kill any of its
citizens- and to kill them in the name of the very law that condemns murder?"
2. Michael Kronenwetter, Capital Punishment: A Reference Handbook. cc. 1993, pg. 49
"The death penalty, unlike other punishments does not give us a chance to
correct mistakes."
-- Diann Rusttierneytg
JUSTICE AND VICTIMS
1. Michael Kronenwetter, Capital Punishment: A Reference Handbook. cc. 1993, pg. 33
"If justice were to be served in a vindicative way, I'd want him to spend his life in juail. That's
cruel and unusual punishment in this case."
--The father of Westly Allen Dodd's 4 year old victim
2.Capital punishment is not going to do anything for the murder victims. If there's anything I've learned
from my daughter's murder, that's it."
--Dorris Mote, mother of a 14 year old rape\murder victim, Virginians for alternatives to the D.P.
Negative Briefs: November/December 1998