Early last month, I traveled to Frankfurt, Kentucky to testify in support of a repeal bill sponsored by Rep. David Floyd, a conservative Republican. I was joined by a former prosecutor and a sitting judge who both called on the Kentucky House Judiciary Committee to pass the measure. You can watch the entire testimony here.
Nearly 15 different papers covered Kentucky’s attempt to send a repeal bill to the House of Representatives, featuring CCATDP. You can read what Governing, the Lexington Herald Leader, Messenger Inquirer, WEKU, and the Richmond Register wrote about the effort.
The bill was given a vote in the Commonwealth’s House Judiciary Committee for the first time since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. It was an exciting moment for many Kentuckians who crowded into the committee room to observe the proceedings. In fact, there was standing room only, and an overflow room was opened to accommodate the influx of people hoping to end the death penalty.
Anthony Hennen from Red Alert Politics recently published an article highlighting why conservatives are changing their minds on the death penalty and which states seem primed to repeal capital punishment in the near future.
Hennen wrote,
A growing number of conservatives want to abolish the death penalty, and they’re seeing success on the state level.
Once viewed as a liberal position, conservatives have started to reclaim opposition to the death penalty based on limited government power and shrewd economic fact.
Kansas and Montana are expected to be battlegrounds on the issue, and Florida overhauled its laws on the death penalty after the Supreme Court found their prior system unconstitutional.
[Hyden has] found fertile ground to debate and sway others that could make the death penalty a rarity, if not a banned punishment.
A bill to repeal the Utah death penalty sailed through the senate judiciary committee, senate, and house judiciary committee, but Utah’s legislative session ended before the measure was considered by the lower chamber. While the repeal campaign ran out of time, this could easily provide a springboard for repeal next year, and it is additional proof that conservatives in red states across America are uncomfortable with the death penalty.
Utah’s repeal effort caught the attention of national media outlets, and once again, CCATDP was at the heart of the discussion.
Andrea Noble from the Washington Times said,
That the bid to do away with the death penalty was passed in the Senate and a House committee vote this week and was set to be voted on by the full House was a surprising turn of events for a Republican-led legislature that just last year opted to revive the use of firing squads in executions if lethal-injection drugs were not available.
There is a clear national trend away from the death penalty as the Washington Post noted,
There have been discussions about eliminating the death penalty in other states around the country, following some movement over the last several years.
Utah nearly became the second state in as many years to repeal the death penalty. A measure to end their capital punishment program flew through a Senate committee, the Senate chamber, and a House committee, but it was never considered in the House of Representative because the Utah legislative session ended. The Huffington Post’s Kim Bellware covered the story. She wrote,
The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Steve Urquhart (R) abandoned the effort before the midnight deadline. Urquhart told the Associated Press he was closing in on the number of votes needed, but that enough lawmakers remained unsure and a debate would have run down the clock on the legislature’s last day.
Bellware also included a statement from Conservatives Concerned about the Death Penalty, which read,
“Everywhere I go across the nation conservatives are re-thinking the death penalty because it is inconsistent with our values of safeguarding life and promoting fiscal responsibility and limited government,” Marc Hyden of the group Conservatives Concerned About The Death Penalty said Tuesday in a statement.
In advance of my testimony before the Kentucky House Judiciary Committee in support of HB 203, which would repeal Kentucky’s death penalty, I was interviewed by the Kentucky Public News Service. The reporter, Greg Stotelmyer, highlighted the many reasons that make the death penalty more expensive than life without parole and the importance of fiscal responsibility when the state is currently grappling with budgetary issues. However, there are other reasons to reconsider the death penalty. Stotelmyer wrote,
Hyden says when conservatives’ distrust of government is mixed with the issues stirred by the death penalty, it doesn’t make sense for conservatives to support lethal injection.“There’s the risk of killing an innocent person, so it’s pro-life,” he points out. “It costs more than life without parole, so it’s not fiscally responsible. But then, you find that it doesn’t keep the public safe, and it’s actually pretty harmful on murder victims’ friends and family members.”
Abolitionists are confident this year’s attempt to repeal the death penalty, House Bill 203, has a chance to make it out of committee.
Utah seems determined to become the next red state to repeal the death penalty. A measure to end Utah’s capital punishment passed out of committee, and it was approved overwhelmingly in the senate chamber’s first vote on the proposal. Amber Phillips from the Washington Post has been following the story and reporting on it. She interviewed the bill’s chief sponsor who said,
“It’s wrong for government to be in business in killing its own citizens. That cheapens life.”
Phillips also interviewed me for the piece and wrote,
Marc Hyden with Conservatives Concerned about the Death Penalty, a group launched in 2013 to advocate for abolishing capital punishment, thinks what’s happening in Utah and Nebraska is a sign that the United States is on the precipice of a movement to do away with the death penalty.
Lawmakers in Kentucky, Kansas, Montana and New Hampshire are reevaluating whether to keep the death penalty on the books this year, he said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if a few states dump the death penalty” in the next few years, Hyden said.
CCATDP’s Heather Beaudoin joined Blog Talk Radio last week to discuss the burgeoning conservative movement to end the death penalty. She explained the simple reasons why conservatives are increasingly becoming the leading voices in death penalty repeal campaigns. You can listen to the entire segment here.
Yesterday, the conservative publication, The Daily Caller, published an article of mine. In the op-ed, I explained that Conservatives Concerned about the Death Penalty will be returning to CPAC for a fourth year in a row, and I highlighted the many ways that the death penalty landscape has changed just in the past year. I wrote,
As the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) approaches, it is important to be reminded of what conservatism really is. More than anything, it is about commonsense pragmatism and an uncompromising adherence to our core principles, including valuing life and promoting fiscal responsibility and limited government. Increasingly, capital punishment has been viewed through these principles since Conservatives Concerned about the Death Penalty launched at CPAC in 2013. Since then, it’s been remarkable to observe how the death penalty conversation has shifted.
Between Nebraska’s death penalty repeal, executions and death sentences reaching historic lows, an influx of conservative legislators sponsoring repeal, and a host of local conservative groups springing up to end the death penalty, the narrative has undeniably changed.
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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