New Report Documents ​“Dramatic Rise” in Republican Support for Death-Penalty Repeal

“The death penal­ty is dying in the United States, and Republicans are con­tribut­ing to its demise,” con­cludes a new report, The Right Way, released on October 25 by the advo­ca­cy group Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty.

The report traces ​“the dra­mat­ic rise in Republican spon­sor­ship of bills to end the death penal­ty” and the trends that it says helped con­tribute to this rise. Based on this data, the report says “[m]ore Republican law­mak­ers are rec­og­niz­ing that the death penal­ty is a bro­ken pol­i­cy and tak­ing an active role in efforts to end it.” 

The data in the report reflect both the emer­gence of Republican lead­er­ship in bills to repeal the death penal­ty and increased bi-par­ti­san­ship in the spon­sor­ship of these bills. Forty Republican leg­is­la­tors spon­sored bills to abol­ish the death penal­ty in 2016, the report says, ​“ten times as many [who] spon­sored repeal bills … in 2000.” It also reports that the per­cent­age of repeal-bill spon­sors who are Republicans has risen to 31%, a six-fold increase since 2007. 

The report high­lights grass­roots, par­ty-lev­el, and reli­gious shifts in Republican views about and activism against the death penal­ty. In addi­tion to the nation­al Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty, con­ser­v­a­tive anti-death-penal­ty advo­ca­cy groups have formed in eleven pre­domi­nent­ly Republican ​“red states.” 

In Kansas, the state Republican Party ​“removed its death penal­ty sup­port from the Party’s plat­form in 2014” in favor of a neu­tral posi­tion and vot­ed down an attempt to restore a pro-death penal­ty stance in 2016. The report also says Evangelicals are increas­ing­ly ​“forsak[ing] the death penal­ty,” point­ing to the pub­lic involve­ment of promi­nent Evangelical lead­ers oppos­ing state efforts to car­ry out exe­cu­tions in a num­ber of recent cas­es and the new pol­i­cy of posi­tion the National Association of Evangelicals, express­ing neu­tral­i­ty on the death penal­ty and acknowl­edg­ing its flaws. 

Recent nation­al polls con­firm the report’s obser­va­tions. The October 2017 Gallup poll on the death penal­ty indi­cat­ed that death-penal­ty sup­port among Republicans fell by ten per­cent­age points, from 82% to 72%, in the last year, and the Pew Research Center report­ed a sev­en per­cent­age-point decline in sup­port for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment between 2011 and 2015 among respon­dents who described them­selves as conservative Republicans. 

The Right Way high­lights the actions of five Republican state leg­is­la­tors’ efforts to repeal cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in pre­dom­i­nant­ly Republican states, and address­es the sub­stan­tive con­cerns that have giv­en rise to Republican death-penal­ty oppo­si­tion. ​“Plagued by wrong­ful con­vic­tions, high costs, and delays,” the report says, ​“the death penal­ty has proven to be inef­fec­tive and incom­pat­i­ble with a num­ber of core con­ser­v­a­tive prin­ci­ples. It runs afoul of con­ser­v­a­tive com­mit­ments to lim­it­ed gov­ern­ment, fis­cal respon­si­bil­i­ty, and a cul­ture of life.” 

As renewed push­es to abol­ish the death penal­ty move for­ward in states like Utah and New Hampshire, the Gallup orga­ni­za­tion sug­gests that the actions of Republicans may be crit­i­cal in deter­min­ing the death penal­ty’s future. It’s analy­sis of this year’s poll states: ​“Thirty-one states, pri­mar­i­ly in Republican-lean­ing regions, allow the death penal­ty. The like­li­hood of many of those states chang­ing their laws hinges on whether rank-and-file Republican sup­port for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment remains high or declines in the future.”