1. JOHNSON: Conservatives reconsidering the
death penalty
Posted: Sunday, November 27, 2016 9:55 am | Updated: 10:00 am, Wed Nov 30, 2016.
Thomas Johnson Guest Columnist | 0 comments
According to a recent Pew poll, support for the death penalty has fallen by 7% in a single year and it is now at a
forty-year low. From conservatives to prosecutors to victim's families, capital punishment is becoming so great a
boondoggle that many are calling on society to find a better path. Given the death penalty’s many failures, this kind
of backlash is to be expected.
Chance of Error
Nobody wants innocent people to be executed by the state, regardless of their death penalty views, but the death
penalty is not impervious to human error. Since 1973, more than 155 people have been wrongly sentenced to die,
and others have been executed despite their strong claims of innocence.
In fact, former Texas prosecutor James Fry said, “For years I supported capital punishment, but I have come to
believe that our criminal justice system is incapable of adequately distinguishing between the innocent and guilty. It
is reprehensible and immoral to gamble with life and death.”
Individuals can languish on death row for decades before the system catches its mistakes. Anthony Ray Hinton
waited 30 years on Alabama’s death row before he was freed because a reexamination of the evidence demonstrated
that he was not guilty. He lost 30 years of his life, but he could have easily been another execution statistic.
Can we tolerate the risk of wrongfully executing an innocent person?
Fiscal Responsibility
Prosecutors like James Fry and fiscal conservatives are not only worried about the risks to innocent lives but also the
high financial burden the death penalty places on taxpayers. In the state of Maryland, the average cost to sentence
someone to death was $3 million dollars. In my home state of Texas, it was discovered that the price of each death
penalty case in 1992 was roughly $2.3 million, which is the cost of housing three separate people in a maximum-
security prison for 40 years. These numbers make it clear that the death penalty is much more expensive than life
without the possibility of release.
Keeping up with these expenses has led some counties to act in fiscally irresponsible ways. Jasper County, Texas,
increased property taxes by 7% to pay for two death penalty trials, while Clallam County, Washington had to reduce
its county staff by 15% in order to fund a single retrial of a capital case. Utah has even started an in-state death
penalty risk pool to cover the high costs of death penalty cases.
Law Enforcement
Police chiefs across the nation rank capital punishment as the lowest priority strategy for ensuring a safer society.
After a study found that his state of New Jersey spent over $250 million on its death penalty over 23 years, Police

2. Chief James Abbot said, "Give a law enforcement professional like me that $250 million, and I'll show you how to
reduce crime. The death penalty isn't anywhere on my list." Studies find no evidence that capital punishment
impacts murder rates. We’re spending a lot of money on a program for which there is no evidence that it actually
helps law enforcement.
Lack of Closure for the Survivors
The death penalty also fails many murder victims’ friends and families who often find the process to be an
unnecessary, painful, and traumatic ordeal. A Boston bombing survivor even said, "The continued pursuit of that
punishment could bring years of appeals and prolong reliving the most painful day of our lives."
The multiple trials, necessarily long appeals process, and constant media attention associated with death sentences
means that murder victim’s families can expect to spend decades waiting for an execution – if it occurs at all.
Count the Costs
If conservatives, prosecutors, and police officials have a growing skepticism about the death penalty’s efficacy and
many victims’ families don’t feel the process benefits them, then why do some insist on the death penalty? Capital
punishment cannot be for the benefit of society because it siphons funds away from other civil services. We cannot
streamline the process without condemning ourselves to a system that would knowingly circumvent the
Constitutional right to due process and increase the likelihood of executing an innocent person.
Confronted with this evidence, more conservatives are concluding that the death penalty is a wasteful government
program that also harms murder victims’ families and imperils innocent lives.
Thomas Johnson is a Charles Koch Institute Communications Fellow with Conservatives Concerned about the
Death Penalty, a project of EJUSA. He formerly worked with Americans for Prosperity, where he served as a Field
Associate in South Texas. Thomas has also worked with a Congressional campaign in Missouri and as a missions
intern in Bolivia.