Legislators in Virtual Forum Say Economic Impact of Coronavirus Adds to Conservatives’ Concerns About the Death Penalty

Legislators in an August 13, 2020 vir­tu­al forum on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment say that the eco­nom­ic impact of the coro­n­avirus on state bud­gets adds to their con­cerns about the via­bil­i­ty and desir­abil­i­ty of the death penal­ty as a social policy. 

In an inter­net news con­fer­ence spon­sored by Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty, three Republican state rep­re­sen­ta­tives who have spon­sored bills to abol­ish their states’ death penal­ty laws char­ac­ter­ized the death penal­ty as a waste of tax­pay­er mon­ey that, with bud­get short­falls caused by the eco­nom­ic dev­as­ta­tion from the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, should be expend­able. Georgia State Representative Brett Harrell (pic­tured), Ohio State Representative Niraj Antani, and Wyoming State Representative Jared Olsen all said that the grow­ing unaf­ford­abil­i­ty of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment was an addi­tion­al rea­son the pol­i­cy was incon­sis­tent with their conservative principles.

Harrell, the chair­man of the Georgia House Ways and Means Committee, called the death penal­ty an ​“incred­i­bly expen­sive propo­si­tion” that doesn’t work. ​“Evidence sug­gests – study after study – that it is not an actu­al deter­rent to crime and we have alter­na­tives, such as life with­out parole. … As some­one who is fis­cal­ly con­ser­v­a­tive and prefers a small gov­ern­ment con­sis­tent with effi­cient imple­men­ta­tion of gov­ern­ment, the death penal­ty fails on all those mea­sures,” he said.

Antani, who has won the Republican nom­i­na­tion for the Ohio Sixth State Senate District, said the state’s bud­get cur­rent­ly allo­cates $3 mil­lion per year to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment at a time Ohio faces $300 mil­lion in cuts to its edu­ca­tion bud­get caused by pan­dem­ic-relat­ed rev­enue short­ages. ​“This is not tax­pay­er dol­lars being well-used,” Antani said. ​“That mon­ey could be going to edu­ca­tion, to oth­er crit­i­cal pro­grams and ser­vices that would actu­al­ly save lives.”

Olsen, whose repeal bill passed the state house and a sen­ate com­mit­tee in the 2019 leg­isla­tive ses­sion, described the death penal­ty as ​“insane­ly cost­ly in the state of Wyoming.” For that same rea­son, Governor Mark Gordon said last month that he was ​“very seri­ous­ly” con­sid­er­ing impos­ing a mora­to­ri­um on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the state. Facing a $1.5 bil­lion bud­get deficit, Gordon told mem­bers of the legislature’s Joint Appropriations Committee on July 13, 2020 that a cap­i­tal case ​“costs us around a mil­lion dol­lars every time that is brought up. These are just lux­u­ries — lux­u­ries, that we will no longer be able to afford.”

Summarizing the nation­al land­scape, CCATDP’s senior nation­al man­ag­er, Hannah Cox, said “[m]any state law­mak­ers are begin­ning to con­sid­er the death penal­ty as an obvi­ous pro­gram to scrap as they strug­gle to find ways to pay for essen­tial ser­vices in their states.” With tax rev­enues con­tin­u­ing to drop because of the pan­dem­ic, ​“this is an obvi­ous cut,” she said.