Roy Brown, state senator and 2008 Republican nominee for governor of Montana, said that opposition to capital punishment aligns well with his conservative ideology. He is reaching out to social and fiscal conservatives, hoping to create a bipartisan movement against capital punishment. Brown noted, “I believe that life is precious from the womb to a natural death.” He continued, “Criminals should be prosecuted. I want it to be life without parole. In the long run, that’s much cheaper.” Richard Viguerie, a fundraiser and activist considered by some to be the father of the modern conservative movement, recently wrote an article for Sojourners magazine noting that flaws in the criminal justice system show the risk that an innocent person has been put to death. He said, “[D]eath row inmates have been exonerated by DNA evidence, raising the prospect that prosecutors and juries made mistakes in cases without scientific evidence and in cases that predate the science.”
(B. Barrouquere, “Anti-death penalty movement wooing conservatives,” The Washington Post (AP), January 18, 2010.) See also New Voices and Innocence.
