In a recent op-ed in the Chicago Tribune following Illinois’s abolition of the death penalty, author and attorney Scott Turow (pictured) outlined three major conservative reasons for opposing capital punishment: it is a failed government program, it is a waste of money, and it doesn’t fit with the idea of limited government. Turow served on former Governor George Ryan’s Commission on Capital Punishment, which found numerous problems with the state’s death penalty. In highlighting the failures of the system, Turow said, “For conservatives who believe government is too large, too inefficient and too unwieldy to deliver health care, or even the mail for that matter, it should come as no surprise that government efforts to justly select those worthy of death has been a moral disaster.” On the issue of costs, he addressed the high cost of death penalty trials and appeals and the lack of deterrent effect, saying, “if the death penalty clearly served a practical purpose like saving lives, these increased costs might be worth it. But in Illinois we have experienced a steady decline in our murder rate since Gov. Ryan first declared the moratorium on executions.” Turow closed by noting that some of our European allies abolished the death penalty as a reaction to the horrors of World War II. “The conservative-libertarian view that says that the powers of government must be strictly limited supports drawing a clear line prohibiting a democratic government from ever lawfully killing any of the citizens from whom it draws power. That way a regime that vanished its political enemies or executed despised minorities would mark itself, whatever the legal rigamorole, as an outlaw.”

(S. Turow, “The right has reason to applaud,” Chicago Tribune, March 10, 2011). See New Voices and Recent Legislation.

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