Saying that if one is look­ing to iden­ti­fy ​“failed gov­ern­ment pro­grams …, Florida’s death penal­ty cer­tain­ly fills the bill,” Brian Empric (pic­tured), vice-chair­man of the Florida Federation of Young Republicans, presents a con­ser­v­a­tive case against the death penal­ty. In a recent guest col­umn for the Orlando Sentinel, Empric says that — as the Florida leg­is­la­ture weighs its response to the U.S. Supreme Court deci­sion in Hurst v. Florida — the state should halt all exe­cu­tions “[u]ntil the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of our sen­tenc­ing process is sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly addressed.… [M]ore impor­tant,” he adds, ​“Floridians are being pre­sent­ed with a great oppor­tu­ni­ty to re-exam­ine cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment.” Empric argues that the death penal­ty con­flicts with con­ser­v­a­tive pro-life val­ues and that ​“it is impos­si­ble to square cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment with these views.” He goes on to describe sys­temic prob­lems in the admin­is­tra­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment that he believes vio­late con­ser­v­a­tive prin­ci­ples. He high­lights the ​“pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct, mis­tak­en eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny, and reliance on erro­neous foren­sic tes­ti­monies” that has led to Florida’s 26 death row exon­er­a­tions — the most in the nation. ​“The human ele­ment in the process,” he says, ​“assures us that the death penal­ty will nev­er be entire­ly accu­rate, but when poten­tial­ly inno­cent lives hang in the bal­ance, we can­not accept any­thing less than per­fec­tion.” He cites a study that found Florida could save at least $50 mil­lion by replac­ing the death penal­ty with life with­out parole, and notes that Jefferson County, ​“was forced to freeze employ­ee rais­es and slash its library bud­get just to fund two cap­i­tal cas­es.” He calls the death penal­ty, ​“a gov­ern­ment pro­gram that fails to achieve its intend­ed objec­tives,” and con­cludes, ​“It’s an issue that should be of con­cern to con­ser­v­a­tives and any­one com­mit­ted to lim­it­ed gov­ern­ment and elim­i­nat­ing waste­ful and inef­fec­tive government programs.”

(B. Empric, ​“Death-penal­ty rul­ing opens door to reform,” Orlando Sentinel, February 13, 2016.) See New Voices.

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