Sunshine State News Network’s Nancy Smith reported on the growing conservative opposition to the death penalty. She interviewed me for this article to highlight the reasons that are motivating conservatives to rethink capital punishment and to trace our many organizational successes. She said,
It may surprise you to discover a growing number of social conservatives and libertarians are questioning the alignment of capital punishment with conservative principles and values.
More and more — even in Florida — they’re rethinking and rejecting the death penalty, according to the man who is carrying the message across the nation, Florida included.
Smith continued,
This is why twice in recent months Hyden has embarked on speaking tours with liberty, tea party, and Republican groups in Florida — in the Panhandle, Tampa, Fort Myers, and Orlando.
Hyden finds capital punishment “doesn’t pass the conservative litmus test” on three counts: It isn’t pro-life, isn’t fiscally responsible and doesn’t remotely represent limited government.
The Death Penalty Information Center’s (DPIC) year-end report provided hard data that pointed to a conclusion that many of us already suspected – that capital punishment is being used with much less frequency. DPIC found that executions are at a 20-year low and death sentences are at a 40-year low. This comes at a time when Gallup found that support for capital punishment is near a 40-year low and Republican support for the death penalty dropped by 5 points in a single year.
It’s no wonder that capital punishment is becoming obsolete. Just last month, George Stinney, the youngest person to ever be executed in the United States, had his murder conviction vacated. He was executed at the age of 14 in 1944 by the electric chair, and his conviction was overturned 70 years later. He had inadequate counsel, and there was no real evidence linking him to the crime other than what was ruled to be a coerced confession by a circuit court judge.
“Heather Beaudoin with Conservatives Concerned about the Death Penalty talks about why capital punishment has become a hot topic of conversation in Conservative circles, and why an increasing number of Conservatives are against it.”
Nebraska State Senator Colby Coash wrote an article describing the state of the death penalty in his state. Senator Coash, a conservative from Lincoln, NE, used to support the death penalty enthusiastically but has since become opposed to it. He said,
Twenty years ago, as a college freshman, I attended an execution. I celebrated. I stood outside the prison, drank beer with other death penalty enthusiasts, and thought that justice had been served.
Since then, I’ve become a conservative state senator in Nebraska. I am pro life, I believe in limited government, and I know that many expensive government programs fail to achieve their goals. I have learned how the death penalty violates conservative principles I hold dear. If I had known what I know now, about how the death penalty really affects states, I would not have been able to celebrate.
Naureen Khan from Al-Jazeera America profiled the state of the death penalty in the United States. She said,
As 2014 draws to a close, the United States will have executed the fewest inmates since 1994 as public views surrounding capital punishment continue to shift and the act of putting prisoners to death becomes more politically and practically difficult.
There were 35 inmates executed this year, in only seven states, with three — Missouri, Texas and Florida — responsible for 80 percent of them, according to the year-end annual report of the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit group that focuses on capital punishment. Moreover, the number of death sentences handed down this year, at 72, dipped to a 40-year low.
Khan interviewed me for this piece, and she said,
Increasingly, there is a conservative case to be made for ending the practice, said Marc Hyden, coordinator for Conservatives Concerned about the Death Penalty, a coalition formed in 2013, calling capital punishment “another broken government program.”
“The death penalty is riddled with systemic failure,” he said.
An article published by Time magazine revealed the how criminal justice reform is playing a bigger role in the Republican and conservative movements. The author, Alex Altman, mentioned conservatives and libertarians who are leading the way including, Charles Koch, Christ Christie, Rand Paul, and Conservatives Concerned about the Death Penalty. Altman said,
A group called Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty inveighs against the failures of capital punishment, a process riddled with “waste, inaccuracy and bias” that “does not square up with conservative ideology.”
I was interviewed by Michele Richinick from MSNBC on the Death Penalty Information Center‘s year-end report and the decreasing support for capital punishment. She said,
The United States saw the lowest number of executions in two decades in 2014, a year in which intense focus was placed on several high-profile botched executions and questions were raised about new drug cocktails that were used in lethal injections.
Thirty-five people were executed in 2014, according to a year-end report released Thursday by the Death Penalty Information Center. In 2013, 39 people were executed. And the 72 new death sentences handed down this year marked the lowest level since 1974, according to the report. In 1996, there were 315 death sentences.
She quoted me as saying,
“No matter where you look, you’re going to find more and more failures with the death penalty,” Marc Hyden, advocacy coordinator for Conservatives Concerned about the Death Penalty, told msnbc Thursday. ”This is not a system that many people want to support when they find out really how broken and really disgusting it can be.”
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.
Test the popup