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 The push from the political advocacy group Conservatives Concerned
about the Death Penalty and lawmakers in places such as Nebraska
would have been unthinkable a few years ago when it would have been
conservative heresy to end capital punishment, a program seen as
bedrock issue of the law-and-order policies embraced by the party.
But those leading the campaign say the death penalty is a costly,
inefficient and heavily bureaucratic program that runs counter to
their core conservative values of limited government.
"This is not an issue just for bleeding heart liberals. This is an
issue that pragmatic conservatives are getting on board with," said
Marc Hyden, a coordinator of Conservatives Concerned about the Death
Penalty, a network of political and social conservatives who say
capital punishment does not align with their values.
Republican support for the death penalty remains strong at 76
percent in 2014, but that number is down from 85 percent in 1994,
according to Gallup.
The conservative push against the death penalty is in its early
phase but has led lawmakers in Nebraska last year to be the first
Republican-dominated state in more than 40 years to approve an
execution ban. The measure now needs approval from voters in
November to take effect. In March, lawmakers in red-state Utah came
close to passing a similar ban.
"This is a bipartisan issue that anyone can get on board with," said
Hyden, who served as a campaign field representative for the
National Rifle Association.
The death penalty is legal in 31 U.S. states. But executions have
been on the decline for years, in part due to court battles and a
scramble to secure execution drugs after a sales ban a few years ago
imposed by mostly European manufacturers who said it was immoral for
their products to be used to kill inmates.
Hyden's group is expanding its efforts in Kentucky, Missouri,
Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina and Washington to build bipartisan
support in legislatures where rancor between parties has stymied
scores of other bills.
But despite the momentum with conservative lawmakers, gaining
support among the public in Republican-controlled states may be a
hurdle too high. 'NO SENSE'
A death penalty repeal bill in Missouri, which has executed 86
people since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in
1976, was placed on this year's informal calendar, a wasteland for
legislation without the votes to pass.
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In red-state Utah, which has nine men on death row, the
Republican-led bill to end the death penalty cleared the Senate and
a House committee before dying without obtaining a vote. It likely
will come up again in a session next year.
Utah State Senator Steve Urquhart, a Republican, said he won
supporters among Senate colleagues by highlighting capital
punishment's high costs, lengthy appeals and exonerations in other
states, which underlined its fallibility.
"The death penalty makes absolutely no sense in 2016," he said in an
interview. "It costs an awful lot of money to execute a prisoner
compared to holding that prisoner in jail for the rest of his or her
life."
A state study found that Utah pays about $1.7 million more to fund
items such as appeals, public defenders and carrying out executions
for death penalty convictions than it would to incarcerate the same
inmate for life.
But advocates of capital punishment balk at the idea that expense
should be a factor when deciding punishment for the gravest crimes.
"The death penalty should not be a utilitarian issue in terms of
weighing the costs against the benefits but rather an issue simply
of justice, of who deserves it," said Robert Blecker, a professor at
New York Law School.
The six states before Nebraska to abolish the death penalty since
2007 have been left-leaning or left-center Maryland, Connecticut,
Illinois, New Mexico, New Jersey and New York.
(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Ben Klayman, Daniel Wallis
and Bill Trott)
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