Some Louisiana conservatives are rethinking capital punishment by announcing the formation of a new group known as Louisiana Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty. The organization’s national manager Hannah Cox says a recent study indicates the death penalty cost the state’s taxpayers nearly $16 million more annually than life without parole.
“Millions that are not going toward programs that actually could work to deter crimes in the first place, which we know that the death penalty does not. The death penalty is a failed, broken, big government program marked by all the error, corruption, and fallibility that we see in so many other government programs,” said Cox.
Louisiana becomes the thirteenth state to join the national organization. Conservative activist and member of the St. Tammany GOP Parish Executive Committee Col. Rob Maness says the death penalty doesn’t go along with the fiscal or pro-life perspective of the Republican party, adding sometimes the government gets it wrong.
“As a limited government American, I don’t believe that the government is capable of properly implementing the death penalty at any level. Governments are useful for some things, but this is something that they do not do well,” said Maness.
Cox says they’ve had lots of conservative movement on the issue in other states, but with the state’s death penalty high-usage history, Louisiana’s handling on the death penalty could be very compelling to the rest of the country.
“You have a great track record of improving your criminal justice system, we’ve seen people come together and achieve really cool things in the recent history so we are really encouraged by that prospect and we think that it would really get the nation’s attention,” said Cox.
Louisiana last executed an inmate in January 2010. The lack of access to the drugs needed for lethal injection has been credited for gap.
