NEW VOICES: Former Utah Prosecutor Urges Death Penalty Repeal

Creighton Horton spent 30 years as a pros­e­cu­tor with the Salt Lake District Attorney’s Office and Utah Attorney General’s Office before retir­ing in 2009. In a recent op-ed, he said his expe­ri­ence han­dling cap­i­tal cas­es led him to believe Utah should abol­ish the death penalty. 

Horton not­ed the neg­a­tive impact the death penal­ty can have on vic­tims’ fam­i­lies. ​“If a cap­i­tal case goes to tri­al and the jury returns a ver­dict of death, that pro­nounce­ment is prob­a­bly the last sat­is­fac­tion the vic­tim’s fam­i­ly will get for years, if not decades,” he said. ​“From that point on, the delays and uncer­tain­ties of the death penal­ty appeals process are like­ly to take a ter­ri­ble toll, keep­ing the wound open and deny­ing the vic­tim’s fam­i­ly any closure.” 

Horton said a life with­out parole sen­tence for the per­pe­tra­tor was often the best out­come for the fam­i­lies of vic­tims: ​“When that hap­pens, the mur­der­ers go to prison and, for the most part, no one hears about them again — and the vic­tims’ fam­i­lies are able to move on with their lives.” He also raised con­cerns about wrong­ful con­vic­tions, stat­ing, ​“No sys­tem of jus­tice is per­fect, and so it’s pos­si­ble that an inno­cent per­son could be con­vict­ed of cap­i­tal mur­der, and wrongly executed.” 

The Utah leg­is­la­ture is con­sid­er­ing a bill to repeal the death penal­ty for future offens­es. The bill passed the Utah Senate, and is like­ly to face a vote in the House on March 10.