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.

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