MIG tourney R3: Vigilantism is Justified when the U.S. Government has Failed to Uphold the Law

Con

I thank TUF for this debate and man-is-good for the opportunity to participate in his tournament. TUF's opening round is in the Lincoln-Douglas (LD) debate format, but he has extended me the grace of not having to strictly follow the format myself since I am but a humble debating amateur whose only exposure to LD is via Wikipedia.

TUF and I agree that justice is the value at stake here. He aims to show that the resolution, when affirmed, increases justice. I, on the other hand, will show that when the resolution is affirmed, justice is decreased. I will present my argument against the resolution (Negative Constructive) then follow it with my rebuttal to his contentions (Cross Examination).

Negative Construction

NC1: Vigilantism is self-refuting

Vigilantism is, by definition, the enforcing of justice by citizens outside the regulation of the criminal justice system. Since it is not regulated, an act of vigilantism might be too severe, in which case, the response is more vigilantism. The only way to ensure vigilantism is truly just is to regulate it. Regulating vigilantism will require the criminal justice system to oversee it, in which case it ceases to be vigilantism and becomes an arm of the criminal justice system itself. Therefore, vigilantism only works if it is not truly vigilantism. Ergo, the resolution is negated.

Cross Examination

AC1: Vigilantism only ensures the government's goal's [sic] are carried out to peak satisfaction.

(NOTE: For those readers than chose to skip all the links in TUF's first round, note that one of those links contains his arguments for this contention. I just want to make sure the readers know to what I am referring.)

My opponent takes for granted that vigilantism is itself always carried out justly, and this is where we see TUF's biggest blunder. He criticizes the failings of the criminal justice system for its copious regulations, yet those regulations are designed precisely to mitigate human error. Yet, when the criminal justice system fails, he finds it perfectly reasonable to place justice in the hands of even fewer flawed humans who themselves do not operate under any such regulations.

The justice system—as slow and exploitable as it is—is designed around the notion that due process is an essential element to liberty, as it works to ensure fewer innocent people are found guilty at the expense of truly guilty people escaping justice, and frankly, TUF's criticism against it leaves much to be desired.

First, he links to an article about Mapp v. Ohio to quote Benhamin Cardozo, "The criminal is to go free because the constable has blundered." TUF assumes this is automatically a bad thing, but if he read the rest of his own link, he would see that it goes on explain that the reasoning behind the "exclusionary rule" was to protect citizens. To quote TUF's article:

"Fellow police officers are only too aware that it is both very important and very difficult to obtain evidence, and they are often frustrated by the fact that they 'know' someone is guilty, but cannot get the evidence necessary for a conviction. How effective is the police department likely to be in disciplining officers who break the rules to get evidence that might be used to take a 'known' criminal out of circulation?"

Next, TUF sites the Bureau of Justice Statistics to claim that "60-80% of all crimes are likely to be set free." Now, if that number seems questionable, that's because it has no verifiable truth to it whatsoever. First, he doesn't tell us which year he these tables come from, so I just examined that most recent one, 2008. Second, I could not find this value anywhere in tables 91-108, which TUF sites. Third, those tables are statistics on crimes reported to the police. Not one table mentions "crimes set free." As far as anyone can tell, these numbers are completely fictional.

What it boils down to is this: TUF needs to show that vigilantism increases justice, yet he cannot substantiate the failures of the criminal justice system nor quantify in any meaningful way just how effective vigilantism will be in compensating for said failures. This whole contention is just wishful thinking.

AC2: The people have a right to defend the Justice system.

I can only assume TUF meant to say "The people have a right to defend Justice," not the "Justice System" since he just spent his first contention debasing it. But even with this correction, do people have this right?

To answer this question, we must understand something very important about human rights. Given one person a right means taking another's freedom. To say "Kevin has a right to life" is semantically equivalent to saying "No one has the freedom to take Kevin's life." So, when asking whether people have the right to vigilantism, it is equivalent to asking that the targets of vigilantism do not have the freedom of due process. TUF needs to convince us, then, that due process is not a right. This presents a steep hill for my opponent to climb for due process has been considered a right since the Fifth Amendment: [1]

No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land. (Emphasis mine)

The whole point of due process is to avoid the very thing that vigilantism risks. Moreover, the whole point of a trial by jury is to ensure citizens are in fact involved in the justice process. So, I have to ask, what need is there really for vigilantism beyond allowing for victims to respond with vengeance? Is due process worth replacing with emotionally charged, reactionary violence?

Now let's examine TUF's hypotheticals in the context of US law:

• It is Legal for a police officer to fire a gun at a guilty man who expresses violent behavior.
• It is Illegal for a citizen to fire a gun at a guilty man who expresses violent behavior.

A 19-year old mother Sarah McKinley shot and killed a man intruding into her home, yet she did not have to set foot in a court room. [2] The right to bear arms is protected by the 2nd Amendment and currently all states that uphold the right to self-defense when one's life is reasonably threatened. [3]

• It is Legal for a government official to detain and arrest a man who has stolen, or violated another individuals [sic] property.
• It is Illegal for a Citizen to detain and arrest a man who has stolen, or violated another individuals [sic] property.

"Each state, with the exception of North Carolina, permits citizen arrests if the commission of a felony is witnessed by the arresting citizen". [4]

Neither scenario is true, so neither scenario is convincing enough to eradicate due process and grant citizens the right to vigilantism. Thus, this contention fails to affirm the resolution as well.

Conclusion

My opponent is trying to convince us that there are gigantic gaps in justice that just don't exist. The justice system already allows citizens to protect themselves. In extreme cases, we can even respond in violence. In other cases, we have the courts. The justice system is not perfect, but TUF hasn't done anything to convince us that vigilantism will bring about such perfection and that due process should be reduced in favor of an unregulated vigilante system.

I argue that vigilantism creates an endless cycle of violence that can only be stopped with government regulation, thereby rendering the resolution self-refuting in the first place. For it to work, it must be managed by the very justice system it is designed to circumvent.

Sources

1. http://en.wikipedia.org...
2. http://www.huffingtonpost.com...
3. http://en.wikipedia.org...
4. http://en.wikipedia.org...

Con

Thank you, TUF, for your prompt reply.

Negative Constructive

NC1: Vigilantism is self-refuting

My opponent says I have the wrong idea about vigilantism, but it is in fact my opponent that has the wrong idea, especially in how it pertains to the resolution in question. Vigilantism is the act of taking the law into your own hands, plain and simple. But the resolution focuses on whether or not vigilantism is justified when the government fails to do that for us. For example, TUF's story about the man that quoted Pulp Fiction to scare away a would-be criminal is not the kind of vigilantism about which the resolution is concerned. In that story, the US Government didn't fail to do its job because the US Government didn't even have a chance to do it in the first place.

Implied in the resolution is the notion of reactionary justice, and TUF's anecdotes are false analogies. We're not talking about self-defense. We're talking about bringing people to justice after they've managed to slip through the cracks of the Criminal Justice System (CJS). The reason my argument holds water is due to the fact that judgment over a person's "guilt" is subjective to the vigilante. In other words, after a jury fails to find enough objective evidence to convict, a vigilante subjectively decides the jury was wrong and then sets out to take the law into their own hands.

Subjectivity is the issue here. TUF says vigilantism by definition is always legal, but that doesn't mean that a person isn't bias in their vigilantism. In fact, the only way to uphold truly legal vigilantism is to regulate it. If an entire justice system can't always get it right, surely individuals won't either. Therefore, the CJS will have to regulate all vigilantism in order to verify its legality, in which case, it's not really vigilantism anymore. Hence, the whole idea becomes self-refuting.

Cross Examination

AC1: Vigilantism only ensures the government's goal's [sic] are carried out to peak satisfaction.

"So why not allow us to provide those basic rights for ourselves, when the government fails to?"

Keep in mind that we are talking about responding to the failures of the CJS, not cases of self-defense. So, the answer to this question boils down to the fact that "we" are not objective. Due Process is not some whimsical idea designed to let criminals run amok. It's meant to ensure the government (and by extension, its citizens) does not throw innocent people in the slammer left and right in order to make sure it's rounded up every bad guy in the process. It's unfortunate that some criminals get away with their crimes, but it's much more unfortunate when innocent people are incarcerated. What happens when a vigilante is mistaken? Oh, right, I forgot. In this debate, vigilantism is defined as never being mistaken.

"So what exactly is wrong with convicting a guilty person? Should we not give him his proper justice simply because of how the evidence was obtained?"

There is nothing wrong with convicting a guilty person, and such a question poisons the well against my case. The problem is that elimination of due process has far reaching consequences. It's convenient that my opponent quoted only the first sentence, deliberately taking it out of context. The whole quote shows that when the police are permitted to use illegal means to acquire evidence, then citizens lose their right to privacy. Imagine a "guilty gun" that only discharges when fired at someone guilty of murder. What would be the natural human response? Point and shoot at everyone. Likewise, police would invade the privacy of anyone they desired in the hopes of finding something they are looking for.

"Finally my opponent questions my sources. I ask him to review these, as I am quite sure all the statistics, graphs, and analytics I provided in my source are completely accurate."

My opponent remains confident in his claim that "60-80% of all crimes are likely to be set free." So, I went back to his argument (which is at http://www.debate.org...) only to find out that he edited it. There are two graphs that were not previously there. I'm sorry, but I find this to be highly unfair as I am not able to go back and edit my rounds. At first, I didn't make a big deal that my opponent was exceeding the 8000 character limit in Round 1 (9500+ characters by the way) by placing his arguments into another debate, but changing the data after I've made my rebuttal is clearly overstepping the line of conduct since readers will think my previous round is ignoring data I was not actually privileged to view and evaluate at the time.

That being said, neither graph supports his data. The "Failure of Due Process Rates" details the number criminals set free, but doesn't come close to the 60-80% my opponent claims. In fact, the graph supplies no percentages at all. His second graph titled "Criminals that are likely to go free in 2012" is merely a percentage breakdown of criminals estimated to go free this year. Again, nothing in this graph indicates that "43% of criminals with evidence to their crimes . . . go free this year." My opponent is simply slapping data on the screen and pulling his statistics out of a hat.

In order for this contention to succeed, TUF needs to show that the justice system is failing to the point of necessitating vigilantism, yet all he's offered us in support of this idea is anecdote and arbitrary numbers.

AC2: The people have a right to defend the Justice system.

TUF criticizes the failures of due process for letting murderers go free, which is an emotional plea designed to distract the readers from my insistence that granting vigilantism as a right directly counters the right of due process, which has been deemed a fundamental right for since this great nation's inception. My opponent is under some kind of delusion (probably based on his wildly unsupported 60-80% figure) that murderers are just running rampant. If this were really true, then perhaps due process could be set aside in some fashion, but my opponent hasn't come close to proving this to have any basis in reality whatsoever. I must insist that the benefits of due process outweighs the costs.

TUF then quotes the Fifth Amendment and asserts that "the lawful judgment of his equals" text somehow applies to vigilantism. This is just wishful thinking. In the complete context of the amendment, "equals" is referring to a fair trial by jury. In no way can the Fifth Amendment be twisted to do anything else but protect the right of citizens to have due process.

TUF defends his hypotheticals as being examples of vigilantism in practice. He insists that without vigilantism, we might see self-defense and citizen-arrest laws revoked. Again, this is not vigilantism as it pertains to this debate. These are cases of dealing with crime on the spot when the government is not immediately available. But the resolution implies that the government has to fail first. Defending oneself is not a matter of vigilantism as much as it is survival.

Conclusion

My opponent wants to define vigilantism as always being lawful, by definition. I insist that such a definition is impractical at best and begs the question at worst. TUF's sources completely fail to substantiate his outrageous claims, so his contentions amount to pleading. In every respect, he has failed to affirm the resolution.

I've offered my own argument in negation of the resolution, but even if that fails, TUF carries the burden of proof. Until such burden is met, I contend that resolution remains negated.

Con

In the interest of summary, I will keep this round brief. I'd like to thank my opponent for this debate and for the readers' thoughtful and responsible voting. This is, after all, a tournament debate.

Negative Constructive

NC1: Vigilantism is self-refuting

My opponent, while responding to bits and pieces of my argument out of context, failed to deal with the overarching issue of subjectivity. My argument reaches the conclusion that the resolution refutes itself when it takes into account the fact that vigilantism is carried out by bias, subjective persons. The only way to ensure that vigilantism—practically speaking—can possibly maximize justice is to regulate it within the jurisdiction of the Criminal Justice System (CJS). So, my opponent hasn't really dealt with this issue other than to insist—by circular reasoning—that vigilantism is always just and fair. Unfortunately, since my opponent's stated value is justice, he must show that vigilantism is always just, not just state it so.

Affirmative Constructive

AC1: Vigilantism only ensures the government's goal's [sic] are carried out to peak satisfaction.

TUF tries to turn the tables on me here, citing my admission that the CJS has its problems as support for his case. However, his rhetoric doesn't paint the whole picture. Indeed, I've never insisted that the CJS mete's out justice with 100% perfection. Rather, my opponent is tasked to prove that vigilantism improves, or increases, justice. Has he accomplished this?

TUF did show that the US Government is falls short of perfect justice, but he didn't really show us that was a failure. He gave us bogus statistics and refused to explain how those statistics were remotely supported by his charts. The charts certainly do show that criminals escape justice, but they don't come close to reaching his wild "60-80% crimes go free" figure (see my Conclusion below as to why that quote is no longer available). TUF complains that I didn't provide counter evidence. Counter evidence to what? TUF's evidence is utterly fallacious. I don't need to counter non-evidence with anything.

Now, even if we grant that the CJS is a failure, it's not enough to support this contention. He also has to show us that vigilantism actually improves justice. However, not one single piece of data was offered to show how vigilantism compensates for the CJS's failures. Thus, his entire argument for this contention commits the fallacy of reaching an affirmative conclusion from negative premises.

AC2: The people have a right to defend the Justice system.

"Mistakes are extremely detrimental to the welfare of the people and continue to harm families who have been victimized all over the country."

I agree. Mistakes in justice are detrimental, which is why due process exists in the first place. Notice how TUF repeatedly condemns my position for accepting the mistakes of the CJS without showing us that vigilantism won't make the same or worse mistakes. All throughout this debate, vigilantism is assumed to be better. This is blatant question begging.

Of course, that's not what this contention is really about. This contention is about rights, and TUF does not address the issue of rights. I've argued that giving rights to one group takes freedoms from another. He agrees that due process has its place, but he ignores my highest criticism: that the right to vigilantism removes the right to due process. His only response is, "Is that not what you want as well? Justice?" Yes, but TUF never showed us that due process is less just than vigilantism, he only assumed it based upon his misguided definition that vigilantism is always just in the first place.

Conclusion

My opponent has the burden of proof, as indicated in this opening round. His two contentions are circular in their reasoning, as they are based on the notion that vigilantism is always just, when it's the justness of vigilantism in question in the first place. I gave my own argument against the resolution, but it's only extra-credit on my part, as simply refuting TUF's contentions is all I need to do in order to negate the resolution.

On the issue of conduct, my opponent stated that he has used external debates in the past without troubles. So be it, but this is a tournament debate and formal debates (in real life) have a time limit for a reason. Our character limit is like that time limit, and violating it gives him a distinct edge. However, I don’t really mind the character limit issue so much. I'm okay with it because he had to dedicate a portion of his opening round to rules and parameters.

However, I strongly object to the alteration of his opening arguments after I made my first rebuttal as it serves to unfairly taint my cross examination in the eyes of the readers. In fact, I want back to that debate again in this round and he edited again. As of this writing, he changed his argument 4 hours prior. You will no longer be able to find his claims that "60-80% crimes go free" or that "43% of criminals with evidence to their crimes . . . go free this year." They are gone, deleted without a trace. Not only should that factor into the conduct vote, but it should grant me the most convincing argument as well. I put a lot of time refuting arguments that were changed or removed, which makes me look worse with each edit. I insist that such tactics are no less than flat out cheating.

As for sources, my opponent has exhibited very poor scholarship when it comes to his facts and figures. He repeatedly dodged my criticisms of his "60-80% crimes go free" figure (other than to delete it), which had no basis in reality. He dodged my criticism that his pie graph had zero correlation with his 43% of criminals going free figure (other than to delete it). Instead of rebutting my criticisms, he only states, "All of my data in the source is completely accurate." Such bare assertions are not debate.

I'd like to thank everyone for their time and thoughtful consideration.