In an op-ed in the Knoxville News-Sentinel, Tennessean Drew Johnson evoked con­ser­v­a­tives’ inten­tions to ​“pro­tect inno­cent life, pro­mote finan­cial respon­si­bil­i­ty and sup­port gov­ern­ment pro­grams that real­ly work” in crit­i­ciz­ing the death penal­ty. Johnson, a Senior Fellow at Taxpayers Protection Alliance and founder of the Beacon Center of Tennessee, cit­ed the many exon­er­a­tions from death row as anoth­er rea­son to chal­lenge cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment: ​“Life is too pre­cious to rely on mis­take-prone process­es like the death penal­ty.” He not­ed that the Tennessee Comptroller’s Office’s found cap­i­tal tri­als to be 48% more expen­sive than life-with­out-parole tri­als. Finally, rely­ing on the con­ser­v­a­tive val­ue of lim­it­ed gov­ern­ment, he con­clud­ed, ​“My view of lim­it­ed gov­ern­ment is not giv­ing the state the pow­er to kill American cit­i­zens. There is noth­ing lim­it­ed about that authority.…It’s time that con­ser­v­a­tive Tennesseans begin to look at the death penal­ty to con­sid­er whether it’s con­sis­tent with our view of the role of gov­ern­ment and decide if ret­ri­bu­tion and revenge is worth sac­ri­fic­ing our prin­ci­ples, free­doms and lib­er­ties.” Read the full op-ed below.

Drew Johnson: Capital punishment inconsistent with conservative views

by Drew Johnson

Conservatives from all lev­els of gov­ern­ment are fight­ing to pro­tect inno­cent life, pro­mote finan­cial respon­si­bil­i­ty and sup­port gov­ern­ment pro­grams that real­ly work. After all, that’s what con­ser­vatism is all about. That’s why con­ser­v­a­tives such as myself, Tennessee state Rep. Steve McManus, R‑Cordova, and nation­al lead­ers like Brent Bozell, Jay Sekulow and Ron Paul have all begun to pub­licly ques­tion capital punishment.

National sup­port for the death penal­ty is at an all-time low. Our neigh­bor to the east, North Carolina, sup­port­ed repeal­ing the death penal­ty by 68 per­cent in a recent poll.

Earlier this month, Reginald Griffin of Missouri became the 143rd per­son to be wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed and released from death row since 1973. How many oth­ers were not so for­tu­nate and were wrong­ly exe­cut­ed? We may nev­er know, but if con­ser­v­a­tives con­tin­ue to fight for inno­cent life, then we should­n’t sup­port a pro­gram that is proven to be wrong time and time again when lives hang in the balance.

Life is too pre­cious to rely on mis­take-prone process­es like the death penalty.

Unfortunately, we live in an era when run­ning annu­al deficits and accu­mu­lat­ing enor­mous pub­lic debt is com­mon­place. While Tennessee is run far bet­ter than the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, the death penal­ty is still a finan­cial drain on Volunteer State tax­pay­ers. The state Comptroller’s Office found that cap­i­tal tri­als are 48 per­cent more expen­sive than tri­als with life with­out parole as the punishment.

That does­n’t even begin to cov­er the decades-long appeals process, hous­ing inmates on death row and legal fees that make the death penal­ty sev­er­al times more expen­sive than com­pa­ra­ble cas­es with the pun­ish­ment of life with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of release.

We con­tin­ue to pay the tab for this pro­gram because we are told that it deters crime and pro­tects the pub­lic, but many stud­ies prove there is no evi­dence that the death penal­ty deters crime any bet­ter than life with­out parole. If it did deter crime, then should­n’t the state that uses it the most, Texas, have the low­est mur­der rates in the nation? It doesn’t.

My view of lim­it­ed gov­ern­ment is not giv­ing the state the pow­er to kill American cit­i­zens. There is noth­ing lim­it­ed about that authority.

Our gov­ern­ment is encroach­ing upon every aspect of our lives and assum­ing all kinds of pow­er. If the gov­ern­ment can’t fig­ure out how to run the health​care​.gov web­site, then why do peo­ple think the gov­ern­ment can oper­ate the death penalty program?

The truth is that gov­ern­ment is not per­fect, far from it, and the death penal­ty runs a dan­ger­ous­ly high prob­a­bil­i­ty of killing inno­cent peo­ple, siphons bil­lions of dol­lars from the pub­lic and gives the gov­ern­ment pow­er it can­not be trust­ed to car­ry out fairly.

To make mat­ters worse, the state of Tennessee has decid­ed to make its death penal­ty drug con­fi­den­tial. The pub­lic is not allowed to know what the drug is or where it was pro­cured. It does­n’t make sense that the state gov­ern­ment would con­ceal this infor­ma­tion unless it has some­thing to hide. 

Conservatives believe in trans­paren­cy in gov­ern­ment, not secrets from the pub­lic, which this clearly is.

It’s time that con­ser­v­a­tive Tennesseans begin to look at the death penal­ty to con­sid­er whether it’s con­sis­tent with our view of the role of gov­ern­ment and decide if ret­ri­bu­tion and revenge is worth sac­ri­fic­ing our prin­ci­ples, free­doms and liberties.

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East Tennessee res­i­dent Drew Johnson is a Senior Fellow at the Taxpayers Protection Alliance and the founder of the Beacon Center of Tennessee.

(D. Johnson, ​“Drew Johnson: Capital pun­ish­ment incon­sis­tent with con­ser­v­a­tive views,” Knoxville News-Sentinel, December 1, 2013). See New Voices.

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