NEW VOICES: Conservatives Seek to Repeal the Death Penalty in Montana

In Montana, a con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal group is call­ing for an end to the death penal­ty after a recent court rul­ing held the state’s exe­cu­tion pro­to­col uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. Former Republican state Senator Roy Brown said, ​“Conservatives dis­like waste and inef­fi­cien­cy. That is why we should cast a crit­i­cal eye when the state is involved with the busi­ness of exe­cut­ing peo­ple…. When it takes over 20 years and hun­dreds of thou­sands of tax pay­er dol­lars for extra legal fees and court costs, it is obvi­ous that the process is full of waste and inef­fi­cien­cy.” Steve Dogiakos, a mem­ber of Montana Conservatives Concerned about the Death Penalty, said the court rul­ing ​“shines a bright light on the inef­fec­tive­ness and inef­fi­cien­cies asso­ci­at­ed with capital punishment.” 

Republican Representative Christy Clark (pic­tured) plans to spon­sor a bill to replace the death penal­ty with life with­out parole. She said, ​“It is time for con­ser­v­a­tives to do what they do best and insist that a waste­ful inef­fi­cient gov­ern­ment pro­gram gets off the books. Small gov­ern­ment and the death penal­ty don’t go togeth­er. We should not trust the state to get this right.”