Republican Legislators Introduce Bill to Repeal and Replace Utah’s Death Penalty

Two con­ser­v­a­tive Republican leg­is­la­tors, both for­mer sup­port­ers of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, have intro­duced leg­is­la­tion that would end death-penal­ty pros­e­cu­tions in Utah.

On January 18, 2022, the first day of the three-month 2022 leg­isla­tive ses­sion in the deeply con­ser­v­a­tive state, State Representative V. Lowry Snow (pic­tured, left) and Senator Daniel McCay (pic­tured, right) intro­duced HB 147, which would pro­hib­it the death penal­ty for aggra­vat­ed mur­ders com­mit­ted after May 4, 2022 and for all oth­er aggra­vat­ed mur­ders for which pros­e­cu­tors had not filed a notice of intent to seek the death penal­ty before May 4, 2022. The mea­sure has the sup­port of vic­tims’ fam­i­ly mem­bers, busi­ness lead­ers, and four pros­e­cu­tors rep­re­sent­ing more than half the state’s population.

Aggravated mur­der is cur­rent­ly pun­ish­able in Utah by the death penal­ty, life in prison with­out pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole, or a sen­tence of 25 years to life. HB 147 would repeal the death-penal­ty option and add a new non-cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing alter­na­tive of 45 years to life. The bill would not affect the sen­tences of the sev­en men cur­rent­ly on the state’s death row.

Snow, the House spon­sor of the bill, said ​“The real­i­ty is, of our sys­tem, in our state, in oth­er states, it’s not a per­fect sys­tem. But when we impose a death sen­tence, it is a per­fect sen­tence. There’s noth­ing that is left after a person’s life is tak­en. It’s final. There is no way to cor­rect that.” McCay told the edi­to­r­i­al boards of the Deseret News and KSL​.com that the death penal­ty ​“sets a false expec­ta­tion for soci­ety, sets a false expec­ta­tion for the vic­tims and their fam­i­lies, and increas­es the cost to the state of Utah.”

Sharon Wright Weeks, whose sis­ter and niece were mur­dered in 1984, has been an out­spo­ken advo­cate for repeal. She spoke about how the death-penal­ty appeals process for Ron Lafferty, the man con­vict­ed of killing her fam­i­ly mem­bers, caused addi­tion­al trau­ma for her fam­i­ly. ​“The vast major­i­ty of peo­ple have no idea what vic­tims’ fam­i­lies are going through, going through this appel­late process. It’s absolute­ly hor­ren­dous, and it’s mean,” she told The Independent. A meet­ing with her helped con­vince Rep. Snow to support abolition. 

“She expressed to me the trau­ma her fam­i­ly had been through, not just in terms of his two tri­als but the promise, the rep­re­sen­ta­tion that was made by the state that he should be put to death, and now we were at 33, 34 years lat­er, and it still hadn’t occurred,” he said. ​“In between, every time there was any­thing that hap­pened in terms of him exer­cis­ing his appel­late rights or rehear­ing rights, or the sec­ond tri­al that the fam­i­ly had to go through, they had to relive again the trag­ic loss of her sis­ter as well as her sister’s infant daughter.”

Weeks also said that exe­cut­ing Lafferty, who spent 34 years on death row before dying of nat­ur­al caus­es in 2019, would have been ​“dev­as­tat­ing.” “[T]o have the gov­ern­ment wheel a man in a wheel­chair and shoot him. That would have dev­as­tat­ed me,” she said. ​“That would have com­pli­cat­ed and com­pound­ed an already healed por­tion of my loss.”

A coali­tion of more than 240 busi­ness lead­ers, led by Virgin founder Sir Richard Branson, have signed on to a call by the Responsible Business Initiative for repeal of the death penal­ty world­wide. Those lead­ers include Jared Smith, a Utah res­i­dent and cofounder of Qualtrics, one of the state’s high­est pro­file tech com­pa­nies ​“As I have learned more about the death penal­ty, I have become con­vinced that its dis­re­gard for the val­ue of human life, its poten­tial to exe­cute inno­cents, its stark racial dis­par­i­ty and its exor­bi­tant cost mean that it has no place in a mod­ern soci­ety,” Smith said. 

Utahn David Crane, for­mer President of NRG Energy, said, ​“No evi­dence exists to sup­port the idea that cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment makes peo­ple safer. Certain recent heinous crimes in Utah bear wit­ness to this. As a con­ser­v­a­tive and deeply moral State with an intense com­mit­ment to the sanc­ti­ty of human life, ALL human life, Utah now has the oppor­tu­ni­ty to lead — by turn­ing away from cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, the only jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for which is retribution.”

Branson wrote that, with HB 147, ​“Utah has a his­toric oppor­tu­ni­ty to do away with a deeply flawed and inhu­mane form of punishment.”

Other con­ser­v­a­tives have joined Snow and McCray in urg­ing pas­sage of the bill. Amelia Powers Gardner, a Utah County Commissioner, wrote in a January 18, 2022 op-ed in the Deseret News, ​“We all want to hold vio­lent offend­ers respon­si­ble, but we need to rec­og­nize that the death penal­ty sim­ply doesn’t work, is applied to peo­ple who are actu­al­ly inno­cent, costs sig­nif­i­cant tax­pay­er dol­lars and harms vic­tims by pro­long­ing their suf­fer­ing.” Utah’s death penal­ty has end­ed up being ​“life in prison, but at a much high­er cost,” she wrote. 

Gardner and her fel­low Utah County Commissioners vot­ed in October 2021 to sup­port abol­ish­ing the death penal­ty. Four Utah pros­e­cu­tors, rep­re­sent­ing 57.5% of the state’s pop­u­la­tion, expressed sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments in an open let­ter to the leg­is­la­ture in September 2021. The four pros­e­cu­tors — two Democrats and two Republicans — wrote, ​“the death penal­ty in Utah today is a per­ma­nent and irre­versible sen­tence with­in an imper­fect sys­tem. It fails to deter crime. It retrau­ma­tizes vic­tims. It dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly applies to minori­ties. It is expen­sive. And it makes plea negotiations coercive.”

Demetrius Minor, nation­al man­ag­er at Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty, said the action in Utah is part of a larg­er nation­al move­ment among con­ser­v­a­tives. ​“In my con­ver­sa­tions with Republicans and con­ser­v­a­tives, there is this fer­vor and this desire to see our crim­i­nal jus­tice reformed, to reimag­ine what jus­tice looks like,” he said. ​“Conservatives and Republicans are tak­ing the lead in the are­na of crim­i­nal jus­tice reform like I’ve nev­er seen before.”