COMING TO JACKSONVILLE
CONSERVATIVES CONCERNED ABOUT THE DEATH PENALTY
Jacksonville-based liberty organization will address the issue September 21st
September 9, 2015 – Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty (CCATDP), a national network of conservatives and libertarians questioning the alignment of capital punishment with their principles, will be featured at the upcoming monthly meeting of Jacksonville Liberty on the Rocks.
“The financial burden, the risk of taking an innocent life, and the continuity of the Pro-Life ideology is something that can no longer be overlooked, or cast aside,” said Travis Wilson of Jacksonville Liberty On the Rocks. “It is far past time to end the barbaric practice of capital punishment.”
CCATDP national coordinator Marc Hyden, a representative of the NRA in Florida prior to taking this position, will be making a presentation to the group about why conservatives in Florida and across the nation are re-thinking the death penalty.
“Liberty-minded people want to limit the power of government, including the death penalty, which is a broken and wasteful government program that has the real potential of killing innocent Americans,” said Hyden.
COMING TO ST. JOHNS COUNTY
CONSERVATIVES CONCERNED ABOUT THE DEATH PENALTY
St. Johns County-based GOP organization will address the issue September 15th
September 9, 2015 – Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty (CCATDP), a national network of conservatives and libertarians questioning the alignment of capital punishment with their principles, will be featured at the upcoming monthly meeting of the St. Johns County Young Republicans.
“It is incumbent upon us as citizens to be educated on any law, policy or regulation that allows our government to remove any of our freedoms,” said Elizabeth Amato of the St. Johns County Young Republicans. “The death penalty is one such power we have given to our government and the exercise of this power should rightfully be reviewed on a continuing basis.”
CCATDP national coordinator Marc Hyden, a representative of the NRA in Florida prior to taking this position, will be making a presentation to the group about why conservatives in Florida and across the nation are re-thinking the death penalty.
I was interviewed by Thomas Zimmer from Sputnik News on the California case, which may determine whether the state’s death penalty system in constitutionals. Zimmer wrote,
On Monday, The Los Angeles Times reported that a US appeals court focused on procedural issues that could put at risk a previous district court ruling that declared California’s system of capital punishment was unconstitutional because of “decades-long delays.”
“Long delays in their [state of California’s] system and recurring appeals add to the already enormous tab and give nothing but uncertainty to murder victims’ families who are retraumatized with every appeal and news story,” Hyden said on Tuesday.
California has spent more than $4 billion on their capital punishment system, Hyden added, and have executed 13 individuals while releasing three from death row who were wrongly convicted.
“I think it’s appropriate for the courts to review California’s death penalty system,” Hyden said. “It is marred by mistakes, inefficiency, and long delays.”
On August 27, the Huffington Post reported that it appears that enough signatures have been obtained to put the death penalty repeal on the ballot. Kim Bellware wrote,
Ninety days after the Nebraska legislature voted to repeal the death penalty, supporters of capital punishment say they have collected enough signatures to potentially bring it back.
Nebraskans For The Death Penalty beat the ballot referendum deadline by one day and on Wednesday afternoon delivered 166,692 signatures to Secretary of State John Gale’s office.
However, the signatures came at a very high financial cost, and it doesn’t change the fact that the death penalty is still irrevocably broken. Soon, all Nebraskans will have the opportunity to reject a failed government program.
Bellware continued,
Marc Hyden, the national advocacy coordinator of CCADP, estimated the opposition spent more than $600,000 on signature-gathering efforts.
“No matter how much money Governor Ricketts and his family spend on this referendum, it does not change the basic fact that they are trying to sell Nebraskans a lemon – a government program plagued by wrongful convictions, high costs, and long delays,” he added in a later statement.
The Huffington Post’s Kim Bellware reported on the Kansas College Republicans decision to oppose the death penalty. She wrote,
The KSFCR, an umbrella group for the state’s college Republicans, last week unanimously passed a resolution supporting a repeal of the death penalty in Kansas. The resolution marks the first time the group has taken a position on the issue.
She also noted that repealing the death penalty isn’t just a liberal desire,
Abolishing the death penalty is usually thought of as a goal of social progressives, but Marc Hyden of the group Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty said it’s quickly becoming a conservative cause, too — albeit for different reasons.
“The narrative is changing around the death penalty,” Hyden told HuffPost. “The state Republicans took the death penalty off their platform, so it makes sense the College Republicans went along with this resolution.”
“My experience in talking to colleges across the U.S. [is that] younger people tend to be more skeptical of government power,” he went on.
First published in Voices of Liberty on 8/24/2015
Richard Glossip will be executed on September 16 unless Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin intervenes on his behalf.
The state’s flimsy case [spn-media-asset pos=1 align=left]against Glossip bears the hallmarks of numerous wrongful convictions that have marred America’s defective death penalty system. By all accounts, he did not commit the murder for which he’s languished on death row for over a decade and a half, and no material evidence linking him to the crime exists. His conviction is due to his inept defense attorney and the overwhelmingly biased testimony of the real and admitted killer.
In the mid 1990’s, Richard Glossip was the manager of the Best Budget Inn in Oklahoma City. Its owner, Barry Van Treese, frequently visited the property and regrettably decided to stay the night in early January 1997. While he was sleeping, a man entered Van Treese’s room, bludgeoned him to death with a baseball bat, and covered his body with bedding to temporarily conceal the crime.
The Blot’s Noah Zuss spoke with me recently to discuss the conservative case against the death penalty for a story he was writing. Zuss wrote,
Among coastal liberals, there is the assumption that conservatives all believe in the same things: guns, God and hating the federal government. But on the death penalty, which was once a wedge issue between Democrats and Republicans, over the past decade, there has evolved more bipartisan opposition.
When presenting the argument against capital punishment, I simply said,
“[It’s] not pro-life, fiscally responsible or representative of limited government,” he said. “It fails to deter crime, harms murder victims’ friends and family members.”
But the death penalty fails to provide any real benefits, which were outlined in the article:
“I don’t think it can be effective as a deterrent or to serve murder victims’ friends and family members the way it’s run now,” Hyden said. “A program designed to kill guilty U.S. citizens, it has to be perfect because there is zero margin for error.”
Rabborn Johnson recently published his docu-podcast on the death penalty, which included voices from around the repeal the death penalty world.
From the Mundane Revolution:
Today on the Mundane Revolution, we talk about a subject that we’re all aware of, but that few of us have taken time to ponder – the death penalty. After a 4 year suspension by the US Supreme Court, the death penalty was reinstituted in 1976, and since then, over 1,400 people have been put to death. Today we talk with Ray Krone, an innocent man who was sentenced to die and later distinguished as the 100th American death row exonoree, Jane Davis, a former death row media witness turned death row counselor, Frank Thompson, a retired warden responsible for overseeing the death penalty for the state of Oregon, Marc Hyden, a conservative working to bring a new awareness of the death penalty to his colleagues, and Bill Pelke, who experienced a radical shift in his understanding of the death penalty after his grandmother was brutally murdered.
Earlier this month, I was a guest on the David Pakman Show to explain why there’s nothing conservative about the death penalty. You can watch the entire segment below.
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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