Last Saturday, friend of CCATDP and organizer of the Oklahoma City Liberty on Tap chapter, Craig Dawkins, penned an op-ed for the Oklahoman outlining his views on the death penalty following the voters’ decision to approve SQ 776, which added capital punishment to the Oklahoma Constitution.
However, this vote was not a referendum on the state’s death penalty, and there is an abundance of reasons why Oklahoma should repeal the death penalty as Dawkins pointed out:
Despite voters in November approving State Question 776, which enshrined the death penalty in the Oklahoma Constitution, our state’s death penalty remains a mess. Botched executions and wrongful convictions have plagued the Oklahoma death penalty, putting the practice on hold. Due to such practical problems with capital punishment, there is mounting evidence that we’d be better off without it.
Dawkins highlighted the risk to innocent life, the death penalty’s high costs, failure to deter crime, and harm on murder victims’ families, and in the end, he concluded:
If we have such terrible death penalty results, then should we keep it?
Yesterday, an article written by our former Charles Koch Communications Fellow, Thomas Johnson, was published in the Texas Tribune. In the piece, he described the Texas death penalty’s steep decline.
Thomas wrote,
2016 marks the second year in a row of Texas juries sentencing the fewest number of people to death since 1976. Death sentences peaked at 48 in 1999, while there has been a total of 3 this year. Executions in Texas have also steadily declined to the lowest number in 20 years; last year, there were seven.
Harris and Dallas counties have traditionally been known for their high number of death sentences. However, prosecutors in these counties have increasingly elected not to pursue that punishment, and jurors have chosen alternative sentences such as life without parole. Consequently, no one has been sentenced to death in either county in two years.
Thomas continued, as he outlined some of the many reasons why Texans are opposing capital punishment:
We have poured millions into the death penalty, but the return on our investment has been minimal at best.
Today, an article written by CCATDP’s Heather Beaudoin was published by the right-leaning publication, Bold. Heather described the death penalty’s sagging support and what constituencies are chiefly responsible for the capital punishment’s growing lack of popularity.
Heather wrote,
I am a conservative millennial who works to end the death penalty, and I have witnessed incredible change on the issue in recent years. Millennials deserve some of the credit. As the largest generation in our country, we are coming of age and having an impact. So are the growing African-American and Hispanic populations, who have suffered disproportionately from America’s failed system of capital punishment.
The number of Americans who support the death penalty dropped seven percentage points this past year alone according to Pew Research Center. The only age group with a majority opposed to capital punishment were those under 30, and African-Americans and Hispanics each showed growing majorities against it.
Heather closed by stating,
Conservatives are now working with communities of color on issues of mutual concern.
Last week, I was a guest on the Conservative Syndicate to discuss why conservatives are increasingly opposing the death penalty. I covered issues ranging from the real risk of executing an innocent person, the death penalty’s high costs, it’s failure to deter murder, and its negative impact on murder victims’ families. If you’re interested in listening to the segment, you can find it here.
The death penalty remains in steep decline across the United States, and a recently released report (PDF) illustrates how capital punishment is falling out of favor even in Texas. According to the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, this year the Lone Star State sentenced the fewest number of people to die since 1976. Furthermore, Texas has executed seven people in 2016, which represents a 20-year low. This is incredibly encouraging and demonstrates the hard work of many people in Texas. It also underscores what we’ve known for years: the death penalty is dying.
Conservatives Concerned in the media
News outside of Texas also attracted a fair amount of media attention this month, and CCATDP was available to comment.
• Executions in Oregon have been non-existent for many years, but there are still many people on death row there. Friend of CCTADP, Drew Johnson, and I both wrote op-eds presenting the conservative case for commuting all Oregon death row inmates’ sentences to life without parole.
I recently penned an op-ed outlining why Governor Brown of Oregon should commute all of the state’s death row inmates’ sentences to life without parole, and it was published in the Bend Bulletin.
The Oregon death penalty is like any other state’s capital punishment system. It’s incredibly expensive, and a new study revealed the high costs. I wrote,
The Oregon Justice Resource Center commissioned two academics from the region to investigate the expenses associated with the death penalty, and they concluded that each capital case can cost anywhere from $800,000 to more than $1 million beyond the cost of life without parole.
Oregonians bankroll these expenses even though Oregon has historically shied away from carrying out executions, with two notable exceptions. Nevertheless, if Oregon politicians decided to resume executions, then potentially innocent lives would be at risk:
One only has to look to one of the 35 individuals on Oregon’s death row — Jesse Lee Johnson. He was sentenced to die in 2003, but recent investigations have cast significant doubt on his guilt.
There’s a renewed push to repeal the Nevada death penalty, and the effort to do so has generated considerable media attention. Recently, Jason Hopkins from the conservative outlet Townhall interviewed me about the recent developments and the conservative movement to end capital punishment.
Hopkins pointed out how members of the political right are increasingly opposing the death penalty:
It can be surmised that the shellacking local Democrats took this election cycle means death penalty repeal will be put on hold.
Not so fast.
A growing chorus of conservative outlets are voicing their concern about the death penalty. Capital punishment, they say, is costly, the system is cumbersome, and the practice risks the execution of innocent individuals.
He also included portions of his interview with me. Hopkins wrote,
Townhall spoke exclusively with Marc Hyden, the national coordinator of Conservatives Concerned About The Death Penalty, regarding the legislation in Nevada and efforts nationwide to end the death penalty.
“The states moving closer to repeal are, in fact, conservative ones.
Today, an article by CCATDP supporter, Drew Johnson, was published in the Statesmen Journal. In the article, Johnson acknowledged Oregon’s broken death penalty as well as a recent study that highlighted the state’s costly capital punishment program.
Johnson wrote,
According to the study, “the average cost of defending a death penalty case at the trial level between 2002 and 2012 was $438,651, while the average cost of defending a non-death aggravated murder case at the trial level was less than half that at $216,693.”
He described the exorbitant costs as a “wake-up call” for fiscal conservatives. However, the death penalty’s enormous price tag isn’t its only shortcoming. There are many others, including the risk to innocent life, which Johnson mentioned. In the end, he believes that people who stand by conservative principles must oppose the death penalty, which Johnson clearly stated in his closing:
As conservatives, we should speak out against policies that give government too much power or waste tax dollars. The death penalty is guilty of both.
Questioning a system marked by inefficiency, inequity, and inaccuracy.
Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty is a network of political and social conservatives who question the alignment of capital punishment with conservative principles and values.
We are a project of Equal Justice USA, a national organization working to end the death penalty in the United States.
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