Oklahoma recently made national news and not the good kind either. Following a spate of bungled executions and an embarrassing admission that they used the wrong lethal injection drug, an Oklahoma multi-county grand jury was tasked with investigating the fiasco. Their findings were released last month, and they were appalling.
The grand jury report revealed that prior to a scheduled execution, Oklahoma officials realized that they were in possession of a chemical normally used to de-ice runways, rather than the approved execution drug. When this was discovered, the Governor’s General Counsel urged corrections officials to carry out the execution anyway. He claimed that the drugs were close enough and flippantly instructed corrections officials to “Google it.” Thankfully the execution was stayed, but the grand jury report exposed widespread government incompetence and negligence, which is prompting more Americans to reconsider the death penalty.
Not long after the Oklahoma report was released, a former Texas death row inmate took an important step toward rectifying his wrongful conviction.
Conservatives Concerned about the Death Penalty was featured in the Sunday edition of the Washington Post. The article’s author, Marin Cogan, interviewed CCATDP’s Heather Beaudoin and myself, and Cogan highlighted why conservatives are increasingly changing their views on the death penalty. She wrote,
Beaudoin reaches out to evangelical and other faith-based leaders and gets them talking about policy; her colleague Marc Hyden, the group’s national advocacy coordinator, works with movement conservatives, college Republicans, tea party activists and libertarians.
“For me, it’s about redemption,” Beaudoin says. “I think that is true for most evangelicals as well. That’s at the center of our faith. We believe in grace, we believe that God can do wonderful things. How can we say, ‘You are the worst of the worst, you are not worthy, and we will dispose of you?’ What does that say about us and what we believe?”
Hyden says he and Beaudoin have been surprised by how they’ve been welcomed at events like the Conservative Political Action Conference and on conservative college campuses.
Alan Greenblatt from Governing Magazine published an article yesterday detailing the growing conservative movement to end the death penalty.
Greenblatt wrote,
It’s a government program that is prone to error, marred by long delays and far more expensive than alternative policies. So it may be little wonder that the death penalty keeps attracting new opposition. But it’s surprising where some of that opposition is coming from.
Conservatives are increasingly becoming outspoken objectors to the death penalty’s systemic failures. Greenblatt continued,
The average death row inmate can cost tens of thousands of dollars a year more to house than run-of-the-mill criminals. Prisoners who are executed can cost upward of $1 million more than those sentenced to life without possibility of parole. “This is a program that’s so bad, the left and right can actually agree on it,” says Marc Hyden, a former field representative with the National Rifle Association who now works for an advocacy group called Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty.
Greenblatt closed by stating,
But it’s indisputable that the growing corps of death penalty skeptics now includes many conservatives.
Last week, I was a guest on Tipping Point with Liz Wheeler to discuss Oklahoma’s damning grand jury report on their lethal injection scandal and Florida’s unconstitutional death penalty. You can watch the segment below:
Last week, the Oklahoma grand jury that was tasked with investigating the state’s ongoing lethal injection issues released its findings, and the Washington Post, Business Insider, Daily Mail, and Reason all covered the report.
Mark Berman from the Washington Post wrote,
A grand jury on Thursday sharply criticized state officials charged with carrying out executions in Oklahoma, describing them as responsible for a litany of failures and avoidable errors.
The grand jury’s 106-page report, released Thursday, paints these officials as careless and, in some cases, reckless. The missteps described by the grand jury include a pharmacist ordering the wrong drug for executions, multiple state employees failing to notice or tell anyone about the mixup and a high-ranking official in the governor’s office urging others to carry out an execution even with the incorrect drug.
A syndicated piece by Jon Herskovitz and Heidi Brandes read,
Three top officials who were called by the grand jury stepped down shortly after testifying: Anita Trammell, warden of the Oklahoma State Penitentiary; Robert Patton, director of the Department of Corrections; and Steve Mullins, general counsel to Governor Mary Fallin.
Last January, Florida’s death penalty law was ruled unconstitutional because judges were given too much authority in determining who received a death sentence. In response, the Florida legislature attempted to “fix” the law by mandating that at least 10 of 12 jurors must agree that an execution is the appropriate punishment.
Last week, a Miami-Dade judge, Milton Hirsch, declared that the “fix” is also unconstitutional because it fails to require a unanimous jury, which is standard in most death penalty states. Judge Hirsch wrote, “A decedent cannot be more or less dead. An expectant mother cannot be more or less pregnant, and a jury cannot be more or less unanimous. Every verdict in every criminal case in Florida requires the concurrence, not of some, not of most, but of all jurors — every single one of them.” With Florida’s newest death penalty debacle, Sunshine State executions could remain on hold for quite some time.
In other news, the pharmaceutical company, Pfizer, announced that it will no longer permit its drugs to be used in executions.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
NC CCADP to Have a Presence at the NCGOP
State Convention
Conservatives Nationwide are Reevaluating the Death Penalty
North Carolina is following the trend
May 2016 – Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty (CCATDP), a national network of conservatives and libertarians questioning the alignment of capital punishment with their principles, will once again be joining the North Carolina CCADP at the upcoming 2016 North Carolina Republican Party State Convention, May 6-8.
“North Carolina Republicans love the principles of limited government that our country was founded upon and we will be talking about why the death penalty is not in line with those principles,” said Ballard Everett, state coordinator of NC CCATDP. “If we don’t believe government is capable of efficiently managing healthcare, education, or financial decisions, why would we give those same decision-makers the power over life and death?”
North Carolina is following the national trend away from the death penalty –NC juries have only sentenced one person to death in the past two years and due to ongoing litigation, the last executions in the state was in August 2006.
A piece from Best of New Orleans just came out and reported on the growing number of conservatives who are rethinking the death penalty in Louisiana. The article’s author, Della Hasselle, stated that as Louisiana deals with it’s enormous budget deficit, conservatives are looking at the death penalty as an example of fiscal waste. She also added,
Many in Louisiana still publicly support the death penalty, at least in concept, and experts who oppose it say it’s unlikely the state will abolish the practice any time soon.
But longtime conservatives who conclude it’s too expensive in today’s climate aren’t a political novelty. According to Death Penalty Information Center Executive Director Robert Dunham, it’s a trend.
“If money grows on trees, what it costs to finance the death penalty doesn’t matter,” Dunham said. “But when Louisiana, for example, faces an extreme budget crisis and cannot fund basic services, the question becomes, ‘What is more important for the public good: health care and education, or death sentences?'”
Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty, a project of the reform group Equal Justice USA founded in 2013, backs up Durnham.
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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