Clay Today, a Florida news service, published an article this morning describing the broad coalition aligning in Jacksonville, FL to oppose the death penalty. The coalition includes organizations from both the political right and the left. CCATDP’s Heather Beaudoin spoke with the Clay Today reporter, Harry Shorstein, to discuss the conservative case against the death penalty. Horstein wrote,
“As an evangelical Christian, I think we need to care about the redemption of every person, no matter what they’ve done. I completely understand the desire for vengeance, but our death penalty system is broken beyond our care due to the cost, innocent people being sentenced to death, the harm the appeals process brings to victims’ families and the racial and economic disparity,” said Heather Beaudoin, an advocacy coordinator for Conservatives Concerned about the Death Penalty.
She said matters of life and death are too important to be entrusted to a broken criminal justice system ran by what many conservatives feel is a broken government that can’t be trusted. “People who call themselves fiscal conservatives shouldn’t support a bloated government program that drains budgets and doesn’t work. It’s time to get rid of it,” Beaudoin said.