Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty

George F. Will: “Abolish the Death Penalty”

American political commentator and Pulitzer Prize winner, George F. Will, is out with a fantastic new article in the Washington Post calling for the abolition of the death penalty. In the piece, Will details the case of an Alabama man, Vernon Madison, who the state has repeatedly tried to execute through unconstitutional means. Madison’s first case was thrown out due to the state’s exclusion of African Americans from the jury, and his second trial was thrown out due to inadmissible evidence being inserted into the record. Finally, during his third trial, a judge disregarded the juries’ recommendation of a life imprisonment sentence and again imposed the death penalty on Madison. All along the way, evidence of Madison’s mental illness has been ignored, and now, he no longer remembers the crime that put him on death row due to a series of strokes, dementia, and degenerative disease. Will expertly details the numerous constitutional problems with Madison’s case and the US Supreme Court’s dance around what constitutes “cruel and unusual punishment.” He closes the article with this statement: Conservatives have their own standards, includi
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