THERE IS A nationwide trend of Republican state lawmakers rethinking the death penalty, and their faith is playing a central role. From Catholics to evangelicals, Christian lawmakers on the Right are abandoning capital punishment like never before.
Take Colorado as an example. For years a bill to repeal the death penalty ran into a wall in the state Senate. This year three Republican senators co-sponsored the bill and provided the crucial votes for it to pass. The Colorado House of Representatives approved it and the governor signed it into law in March—making Colorado the 22nd state to abolish the death penalty.
Why did they do it? These Republican lawmakers decided the death penalty does not align with their Christian or conservative values: the sanctity of human life, individual liberty, and limited government. They see a system that exonerates one person on death row for every nine it executes, with more than 160 people in the U.S. being freed from death row due to wrongful convictions since 1973. They see a bloated government program that does nothing to make people safer.
“We were created in the image of God and that is a very good thing. And part of what that means, in my understanding, is it is against the natural order for one created in the image of God to willfully take the life of another created in the image of God,” said state Sen. Owen Hill. “My conscience demands that I vote to abolish the death penalty in Colorado.”
The same story unfolded in New Hampshire in 2019. Forty percent of that state’s Senate Republican caucus voted to override their GOP governor’s veto of the death penalty repeal bill. Their actions ended capital punishment in the Granite State. “I’m a pro-life advocate, and that is a credo I’ve tried to live with my entire life,” said state Sen. Bob Guida prior to voting. “We need to re-inculcate a consideration of the Almighty as the arbiter of life.”
A 2017 report from Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty shows the number of Republican state lawmakers sponsoring bills to repeal the death penalty increased sharply after 2012. From 2000 to 2012, it was rare for GOP state lawmakers to sponsor anti-death penalty bills, but in 2013 the annual number more than doubled. By 2016, 10 times as many Republicans sponsored repeal bills than in 2000, and more than 67 percent of the Republicans sponsoring death penalty repeal bills did so in red states.
Today, 34 states—more than two-thirds of the country—either do not have the death penalty or have not carried out an execution in at least a decade.
Despite this clear trend away from the death penalty at the state level, the Trump administration scheduled four executions for this summer after a 17-year hiatus in the federal use of capital punishment. (The first two were carried out in mid-July.) A diverse coalition of faith leaders responded by calling on the president and attorney general to halt their plan and focus instead on “protecting and preserving life.”
Federal officials would be wise to look at the growing ranks of conservative Republican state lawmakers who are abandoning the death penalty, and at the reasons why. They will find pragmatic politicians who are rejecting a failed system while also affirming their faith.
Heather Beaudoin is senior manager of the Equal Justice USA Evangelical Network and works with Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty.
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