Death-Penalty Repeal Efforts Across U.S. Spurred by Growing Conservative Support

Bills to repeal and replace the death penal­ty with non-cap­i­tal pun­ish­ments have gained new trac­tion across the United States in 2019 as a result of oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty among ide­o­log­i­cal­ly con­ser­v­a­tive leg­is­la­tors. That move­ment – buoyed by fis­cal and pro-life con­ser­v­a­tives, con­ser­v­a­tive law-reform advo­cates, and the deep­en­ing involve­ment of the Catholic Church in death-penal­ty abo­li­tion – has led to unprece­dent­ed suc­cess­es in numer­ous hous­es of state leg­is­la­tures and moved repeal efforts clos­er to fruition in a num­ber of deeply Republican states. In 2019, con­ser­v­a­tive leg­is­la­tors are lead­ing the call for death-penal­ty abo­li­tion in con­ser­v­a­tive-lean­ing states such as Wyoming, Montana, and Kentucky, and play­ing a crit­i­cal role in bipar­ti­san efforts to repeal or reform cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in Virginia and New Hampshire.

The sur­prise strength of a death-penal­ty repeal bill in Wyoming is emblem­at­ic of the grow­ing Republican abo­li­tion move­ment. There, in an over­whelm­ing­ly Republican leg­is­la­ture, a bill to replace the death penal­ty with life with­out parole gar­nered sig­nif­i­cant sup­port from both par­ties and passed the state house and a sen­ate com­mit­tee before falling short in the full sen­ate. In Kentucky and Montana, Republican leg­is­la­tors have intro­duced abo­li­tion leg­is­la­tion and are attempt­ing to build coali­tion sup­port, and in Virginia, the Republican-con­trolled state Senate passed a bill to ban the death penal­ty for peo­ple with severe men­tal ill­ness. Conservatives have said they oppose cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment because of pro-life beliefs, a desire to reduce gov­ern­ment spend­ing, and the lack of deter­rent effect. In New Hampshire, a bill to abol­ish the death penal­ty passed the leg­is­la­ture with bipar­ti­san sup­port, but was vetoed in 2018. The leg­is­la­ture has renewed bipar­ti­san repeal efforts in 2019.

The Wyoming House of Representatives vot­ed (36 – 21) on February 1 to pass HB 145, a bill to abol­ish the death penal­ty. The bill gar­nered the sup­port of a major­i­ty of House Republicans, all the house Democrats who vot­ed, and the chamber’s lone Independent. It then unan­i­mous­ly passed the Republican-con­trolled Senate Judiciary Committee on February 13, before being defeat­ed in the full Senate by a vote of 12 – 18. In the Senate, nine Republicans and all three Democrats vot­ed in favor of abo­li­tion. The bill was intro­duced by Republican Rep. Jared Olsen of Cheyenne with Republican and Democratic co-spon­sors in both hous­es. Senate co-spon­sor Brian Boner (R – Converse) said, ​“We have an oblig­a­tion to have a jus­tice sys­tem that is blind and based on facts, and not based on what we wished it was or what it used to be.” Olsen said he was con­cerned about the num­ber of exon­er­a­tions from death row. ​“It is way too much author­i­ty to vest in our gov­ern­ment, and we get it wrong,” he said. Concerns about costs con­vinced Sen. Bill Landen (R – Casper) to vote for abo­li­tion. ​“I final­ly decid­ed that I can’t go home and feel good about explain­ing to peo­ple all of those myr­i­ad of cuts we’ve made to the state bud­get and then defend expen­di­tures like this, which have gone on for years and years and years,” he said. Wyoming spends an esti­mat­ed $750,000 per year on legal costs asso­ci­at­ed with the death penal­ty, but has not exe­cut­ed any­one since 1992 nor imposed a death sen­tence since 2004.

Kentucky House Majority Whip Chad McCoy (R – Nelson) said he hopes to get sup­port for his abo­li­tion bill from Catholic leg­is­la­tors who have a moral oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty, as well as fis­cal con­ser­v­a­tives who see it as a cost­ly, inef­fec­tive gov­ern­ment pro­gram. ​“When you talk about death penal­ty, a lot of peo­ple imme­di­ate­ly want to have a crim­i­nal jus­tice angle on it or a moral­i­ty angle. And mine is pure­ly eco­nom­ics,” he said. Kentucky also rarely uses the death penal­ty. Its last exe­cu­tion was in 2008 and its last death sen­tence was in 2014. State Representative Mike Hopkins, R‑Missoula, the spon­sor of Montana’s bill to replace the death penal­ty with life in prison with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole, told a House com­mit­tee on February 18 that the state’s death penal­ty was sim­ply inef­fec­tive. The two peo­ple sen­tenced to death in the state have been on death row for thir­ty years, he said, and ​“there is no log­i­cal mea­sure­ment that 30 years equals a death sen­tence. … Regardless of how you feel because of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, nobody is dying from it.”

(Reid Wilson, Red states move to end death penal­ty, The Hill, February 4, 2019; Ramsey Scott, Death penal­ty repeal heads to Wyoming Senate floor, Wyoming Tribune Eagle, February 14, 2019; Nick Reynolds, Death penal­ty repeal bill con­tin­ues to move for­ward, Casper Star Tribune, February 14, 2019; Death-penal­ty repeal fails in Wyoming despite new sup­port, Associated Press, February 14, 2019; Phil Drake, Panel pon­ders bill to abol­ish death penal­ty, Great Falls Tribune, February 18, 2019; Dan Frosch, Republicans Leading New Charge to End the Death Penalty, Wall Street Journal, February 19, 2019.) See Recent Legislative Activity.