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? This deserves an answer. The death penalty appears to be more about vengeance, not justice. What is justice then? Justice is restoration of the victims. It is using the state to separate the criminal from society for many, many years, perhaps life without parole. It is making a person confront the harm they have done. America needs less vengeance and more justice.