Spectators agreed the death penalty should be abolished last night during the 13th Great Debate at the Tsai Performance Center.

The debate, which posed the question ‘Should the Death Penalty be abolished?’ featured speakers from several national organizations, professors and Boston University students.

‘I am firmly in support of it being abolished,’ said Steven Hawkins, the executive director of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. ‘Who are we to play God? What gives us the right to make this determination?’

Hawkins questioned the effects on society of allowing the government to kill criminals. He mentioned that inmates on death row have sometimes been ruled innocent, and that jails would be better used to rehabilitate criminals.

‘For every eight [inmates] executed, one is released on grounds of innocence,’ he said.

Hawkins said DNA evidence has helped to prove innocence, and said 20 percent of people have been released because of DNA evidence since 1993.

But John McAdams, an associate professor at Marquette University, argued that the death penalty has been effective in deterring criminals from committing crimes in the future.

‘I think, in fact, it is teaching people not to kill,’ he said. McAdams connected the effect the death penalty has on criminals to such events like the U.S invasion of Iraq after it had invaded Kuwait.

McAdams said he did not disagree about the death penalty being a harsh punishment, but emphasized its harshness because it was meant to punish the worst criminals. He also said it was impossible to know just how many prisoners were innocent, or how many inmates who were executed were innocent.

‘The death penalty is the worst, that is why it is the ultimate punishment,’ McAdams said. ‘We really don’t know how many innocent people were put on death row.’

McAdams said he thought the number of people who were innocent but waiting on death row was less than 1 percent.

‘An eye for and eye, a tooth for a tooth,’ said Sandhya Ganapathy, a College of Arts and Sciences senior. ‘Is this really the society we want?’

Ganapathy discussed the high cost of putting someone to death rather than simply to give him or her a life sentence in prison. According to her statistics, she said it costs an average of $2 million more for an execution than it would for criminals to be imprisoned.

Those figures did not include the cost of the appeals process, which would cost even more, she said.

Ganapathy also discussed how the United States is the only western industrialized nation that still utilizes the death penalty. She also said two percent of those criminals on death row were juveniles. She compared the United States to other countries like the Congo, Iran, and Pakistan other nations that use the death penalty in the execution of convicts.

Zachary Coseglia, former Student Union president and a School of Law student, told the story of a young child who had been killed with a screwdriver, and how the murderer, who has been put on parole, had committed other crimes.

‘There are some crimes where no other punishment is just,’ he said.

Coseglia compared the death penalty and war, and said the government should step in to defend its people.

‘Our nation uses force to protect us,’ he said. ‘We have a war going on in our streets.’

Diann Rust-Tierney, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union Capitol Punishment project, mentioned the effect of lawyers and how a defendant with less money has a more likely chance of being executed than one which is affluent.

‘If you’re poor, and you have to take the lawyer the state gives you, chances are you are going to get the death penalty,’ she said. ‘The death penalty is rigged by race.’

The final debater, Ronald Rychlak, spoke in a manner the crowd of students was more accustomed to when he told a story about a recent Simpsons episode he had seen. He told the story of how Chief Wiggum, the police chief on the TV show, let a petty thief run away while saying ‘I’d rather see a hundred guilty men get away than chase after him.’

Rychlak, an associate dean and professor at the University of Mississippi, talked about how many people regard murder with horror, and since they are afraid of the consequences of their actions, they choose not to commit crimes in the first place.

After the speakers had all presented, the floor was open to comments from the floor. There were no speakers for the negative side of the debate at the beginning of this session, but some did come forward later to voice their opinions.

Bob Zelnick, chairman of the BU journalism department, moderated the evening’s events.

After the debating, both sides made closing arguments. McAdams closed by debating points brought up by Rust-Tierney.

‘She gave no evidence that doing away with the death penalty would make it more fair,’ he said.

Hawkins concluded his discussion by saying that the money used for executions could be better used ‘in solving the problem of violence in our society.’

Spectators were given the final vote and opted to abolish the death penalty and award the debate win to the affirmative side.