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. A third of the states with formal bans against the death penalty have abolished it since 2007.
But the trend isn’t limited to only blue states, Kim Bellware from the Huffington Post pointed out,
Despite the bill’s failure to clear the state House, supporters pointed to the quick momentum of the Republican-led effort as a positive sign attitudes are shifting against the death penalty.
The Daily Caller’s Casey Harper wrote,
“Following the Utah Senate’s decision to repeal the death penalty and the Utah House committee’s support of repeal, it is unmistakable that an increasing number of conservative Republicans in Utah, like those in Nebraska, are realizing that the death penalty is irrevocably broken,” Marc Hyden, National Advocacy Coordinator for Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty, said in a statement. “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.”