In Utah this week, the Republican-dominated legislature considered a bill to abolish the death penalty in that state. Originally this was considered a long-shot, but the legislation passed the state senate and a house committee before moving to the full house for a vote.
Ultimately, it was tabled in the final hours before a midnight deadline Thursday. But it has a good chance of passing in the next legislative session. If it does, Utah would become the 20th state to repeal the death penalty. (The District of Columbia has also abolished it.) Another 12 states have moratoria on the death penalty and eight more are debating whether to end it.
This move away from the death penalty reflects growing public opposition. According to Gallup, support for execution has declined by a quarter over the last 20 years, to 61 percent, while opposition has more than doubled to 37 percent.
Conservative states are taking the lead. In 2015, Nebraska lawmakers voted to abolish the death penalty over the veto of their governor. Nebraska became the first conservative state in more than four decades to end its use.
A few weeks ago in Missouri, a senate committee approved a death penalty repeal bill for the first time. It failed in a full senate vote, but it was a noteworthy step for a state that in 2014 tied Texas for the most executions in the country.
It wasn’t so long ago that politicians from both parties competed to appear tougher than each other on crime, in part by staunchly supporting the execution of criminals. In 1992, presidential candidate Bill Clinton traveled back to Arkansas to oversee the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, a mentally impaired man who had been sentenced to death. (Just one of many reasons to pray for the end of the Clinton era.)
As it is administered in the United States, the death penalty contradicts several conservative principles. First, but not most importantly, capital trials are extremely expensive, and the slow pace of the appeals process means death row inmates cost the state more than those in the general prison population.
A death penalty infrastructure is expensive. Before abolishing the death penalty, New Jersey spent more than $250 million over two decades on its capital punishment system, and did not execute even one criminal during that period.
More importantly, 156 people have been exonerated after being sentenced to death over the last four decades, including six last year, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. So the death penalty also runs the risk of grave, even lethal injustice. Racial minorities are significantly more likely to be sentenced to death than white criminals who commit similar crimes.
Many conservatives support the death penalty as a necessary tool for maintaining law and order. And, to be sure, there are legitimate practical and philosophical reasons to employ the death penalty under the right circumstances. When applied fairly, it delivers retributive justice at a level of which the majority approves. And in these matters, as much or more than in any other, public opinion deserves to be listened to.
But too often the death penalty isn’t applied effectively, as recent incidents of botched executions in Arizona, Oklahoma and Ohio make clear.
Conservatives should keep an open mind about the merits of abolishing the death penalty. Any policy that empowers the state to spend large amounts of money killing people should be treated with caution.
