A feature story in the March issue of Harper’s Magazine explores the growing conservative movement against the death penalty, with a focus on the group Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty and its national advocacy coordinator, Marc Hyden (pictured). Hyden, who previously worked on Republican campaigns and was a field representative for the NRA, explained the genesis of his views against the death penalty. His opposition to the death penalty came from his pro-life beliefs, concerns about wrongful convictions, and the high cost of the death penalty, which violated his belief in small government. “There’s really no greater power than the power to take life, and currently our government can kill its citizens,” he said. “I don’t think there’s anything limited in that.” The article recounts one meeting Hyden had with Tea Party members in his native Georgia. After pointing out notable conservatives who oppose the death penalty, discussing the financial burdens imposed on communities by capital punishment, and providing examples of innocent death-row prisoners who were later exonerated or executed, Hyden asked the group, “Do you trust the government to fairly administer the death penalty?” Polling from the Pew Research Center shows that support for the death penalty among those identifying themselves as conservative Republicans dropped by seven percentage points between 2011 to 2015, while support among white Evangelical Protestants dropped by 6 percentage points. Hyden and his colleague, Heather Beaudoin, an evangelical Christian and former staff member at the National Republican Congressional Committee, have worked to bolster that trend, highlighting the numerous conservative voices already speaking out about capital punishment and creating an environment in which conservative officials and groups understand they are not alone in their opposition to the death penalty. They helped to shift the National Association of Evangelicals from strong support for capital punishment to a more neutral stand that acknowledges “systemic problems” in the administration of the death penalty in the United States and that “a growing number of evangelicals now call” for a shift away from its use, and have worked with conservative legislators in states such as Kansas, Montana, Utah, and Nebraska to bolster bipartisan support for abolition legislation.
(M. Cuddehe, “A Matter of Life,” Harper’s Magazine, March 2017.) See New Voices.
New Voices
Mar 21, 2024
