Last week, I spoke to a crowded auditorium at Hillsdale College to discuss the national state of the death penalty. The event was covered by Jason Dafnis of the Hillsdale Daily News. He wrote,
In his lecture, Hyden proposed a simple question (to a group not coincidentally made up largely of Conservative college students): Should a Conservative favor the death penalty?
To help give context to that question, Hyden’s presentation included national examples of Americans wrongly imprisoned and sent to death row for crimes of which they were later proven innocent – though for some, exoneration came after their sentences were carried out.
Wrongful conviction is just one aspect of what Hyden calls an expensive, flawed and illogical system of capital punishment. He cited studies that have shown wrongful convictions and terminations based on mistaken identity, prosecutorial misconduct, evidence tampering and human error – and those aren’t to mention the financial impact of the institution.
Hyden said that in some states, sentencing a convicted criminal to capital punishment costs “more than life without parole” due to lengthy trials, protracted court proceedings and cost of testing.