Conservative media outlet Townhall featured Conservatives Concerned about the Death Penalty and presented the conservative case against capital punishment. Townhall’s editor, Leah Barkoukis wrote,
If we believe in limited government, fiscal responsibility and pro-life policies unilaterally, it’s time to give capital punishment a second thought.
Barkoukis interviewed CCATDP’s Heather Beaudoin and me for this article. She said,
“I don’t think there’s anything more important than life,” Hyden expressed, “so for a lot of my fellow conservatives that are also prolife, this is a big issue, we don’t want to see innocent U.S. citizens being killed by the state, we know there’s a risk because humans and governments are fallible, so when you give them the power to kill people, guilty people, inevitably innocent people will fall through the cracks.”
Barkoukis also quoted Heather Beaudoin,
“I think 10 years ago it would’ve been hard to find a group of Evangelical folks who were against the death penalty … but we are seeing a real shift in that now,” she said. “What resonates with them is redemption—that if we believe that God can transform any person and that he is created in God’s image, we can’t support a system that takes away life, even from a person that commits a terrible crime.”
She closed by stating that support for capital punishment among conservatives and Republicans is shifting. She pointed to Nebraska as proof:
What’s happening in Nebraska, where Republican lawmakers are pushing to end the death penalty, is also a good indication support for the broken government program may be waning. If the death penalty is repealed in The Cornhusker State, it would become the first “red” state in more than 40 years to do so.