New Conservative Voices Criticize Death Penalty as an ​‘Inept, Biased and Corrupt’ Big Government Policy

Calling the death penal­ty a waste­ful ​“big gov­ern­ment” pol­i­cy that is ​“inept, biased, and cor­rupt,” a lib­er­tar­i­an think tank and a New Orleans colum­nist have joined the cho­rus of con­ser­v­a­tive voic­es call­ing for the end of the death penal­ty.

In Conservative does­n’t mean sup­port­ing death penal­ty, New Orleans Times-Picayune colum­nist Tim Morris (pic­tured) argues that being a con­ser­v­a­tive requires nei­ther ​“an unyield­ing feal­ty to a par­ty or per­son [or] sim­ply find­ing the polar oppo­site of some lib­er­al posi­tion,” and that while he believes that ​“cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment can be moral­ly jus­ti­fied,” ​“our gov­ern­ment has proven to be … inept, biased and cor­rupt in car­ry­ing out that respon­si­bil­i­ty.” Likewise, in a July 22, 2018 com­men­tary, If You Hate Big Government, You Should Oppose the Death Penalty, pub­lished on the Foundation for Economic Education web­site, Patrick Hauf writes that “[f]rom fis­cal irre­spon­si­bil­i­ty to wrong­ful con­vic­tions to botched exe­cu­tions, the death penal­ty is mere­ly anoth­er waste­ful gov­ern­ment effort.” Hauf, too, crit­i­cizes what he sees as reflex­ive sup­port for the death penal­ty among some con­ser­v­a­tives. While many ​“pride them­selves on their unapolo­getic use of the death penal­ty, its enact­ment,” Hauf says, ​“like most gov­ern­ment pro­grams, is both inef­fi­cient and ineffective.” 

Morris, whom the news­pa­per describes as an ​“inde­pen­dent thinker with a Christian world­view and a journalist’s sense of skep­ti­cism,” dis­miss­es the notion that all con­ser­v­a­tives must sup­port the death penal­ty. As evi­dence that gov­ern­ment can­not prop­er­ly admin­is­ter cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, he says ​“too many inno­cent peo­ple are being sen­tenced to death” and notes that 82 per­cent of death-row cas­es in Louisiana from 1975 – 2015 end­ed with the con­vic­tion or sen­tence being reversed. In anoth­er op-ed, he cites find­ings from a University of North Carolina study that a black male in Louisiana is 30 times more like­ly to be sen­tenced to death if the vic­tim was a white female than when the vic­tim was a black male. After detail­ing the rea­sons con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal strate­gist Richard Viguerie and Pulitzer prize win­ning con­ser­v­a­tive colum­nist George Will also oppose cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, Morris sums up: ​“the death penal­ty is arbi­trary, racial­ly dis­crim­i­na­to­ry, and does­n’t deter crime. I don’t see any­thing con­ser­v­a­tive about sup­port­ing an inept, biased, corrupt system.” 

Hauf also tauts grow­ing Republican resis­tance to the death penal­ty, cit­ing a 2017 report by Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty that high­light­ed a dra­mat­ic rise in Republican spon­sor­ship of bills to abol­ish cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and the results of a Gallup poll that report­ed 10-per­cent­age-point decrease in sup­port for the death penal­ty among con­ser­v­a­tives in 2017. He notes the ide­o­log­i­cal incon­sis­ten­cy between prin­ci­pled con­ser­vatism and the death penal­ty, say­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is ​“one issue where con­ser­v­a­tives often give far too much pow­er to the gov­ern­ment.” He writes, ​“many Republicans allow their ​‘tough on crime’ men­tal­i­ty to over­rule lim­it­ed gov­ern­ment ideals and innate skep­ti­cism of state over­reach. This con­tra­dic­tion with­in the Republican plat­form, although rarely acknowl­edged, expos­es a weak­ness in the party’s ide­ol­o­gy. If Republicans pride them­selves on their lim­it­ed gov­ern­ment phi­los­o­phy, then why would they grant the gov­ern­ment con­trol over life and death?” There is, he con­cludes, ​“noth­ing ​‘small gov­ern­ment’ about cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. … It’s time for Republicans to kill cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment off for good.”