Friend of CCATDP, Jacob Morgan, penned an article demonstrating how Oklahoma’s death penalty is little more than a failed public policy, and the article was published today in the Durant Daily.
Morgan wrote,
Earlier this month, the Oklahoma Death Penalty Review Commission issued their findings after spending a year examining our capital punishment system. The Commission concluded that it is costly and dangerously administered, and therefore, executions should be halted for the time being. Given these findings and that 53% of Oklahomans favor death penalty alternatives, the time is right to reexamine Oklahoma’s capital punishment program.
He went on to highlight the issues plaguing Oklahoma’s death penalty, including the risk of killing an innocent person, the death penalty’s high costs, it’s failure to protect society or aid murder victims’ families, and the spate of botched executions.
Toward the end of the op-ed, Morgan concluded,
I know there are passionate feelings on both sides of the death penalty debate, but rather than reconsidering capital punishment through a subjective lens, we should judge it based on objective facts. Only then is it clear that capital punishment is a public policy failure that violates numerous tenets of conservatism and libertarianism, including valuing life, liberty, fiscal responsibility, and limited government.
