As a conservative who holds governments accountable for a living, I support Orange-Osceola State Attorney Aramis Ayala’s announcement to suspend the death penalty’s use. Our political beliefs may differ, but when it comes to capital punishment, the State Attorney and I are in perfect alignment.

Ayala is correct in saying Florida’s death penalty system is broken. And conservatives should agree. The indisputable fact, regardless of your politics, is that the state’s record on capital punishment is abysmal.

Whether the issue is innocence, the impact on murder victim’s families, or the high cost, Florida’s death penalty system has failed – especially when we as conservatives apply our core principles of individual liberty and limited government to capital punishment.

Florida has wrongly convicted and sentenced more people to die than any other state. Twenty-six people, some of whom spent decades facing execution at the hands of their own government, have been set free since the state resumed capital punishment in 1972. Liberty-loving Florida conservatives are increasingly deciding that the very real prospect of letting the government kill innocent people is unacceptable.

Limited government? I don’t think so. Government run amok is more like it.

To keep the machinery of death operating, the state is violating the spirit of its open government “sunshine laws.” As sources for Florida's lethal-injection mix have dried up, the Department of Corrections has refused to say how it is obtaining the drugs and won’t reveal how much the state has stockpiled. I don’t know about you, but the mere thought of government operating in secret – with no oversight or accountability – when lives are on the line sends a chill down my spine.

Florida taxpayers are also paying a high price for the state’s irreparably broken death penalty. More than a dozen states have discovered that capital cases are up to 10 times more expensive than other similar noncapital cases due to up front defense and prosecution costs, appeals, and incarceration. But even with nearly 400 death row inmates, Florida has never made a serious attempt to determine the fiscal impacts. Legislative quick fixes in the wake of court rulings have just ratcheted up the costs. Fiscal conservatives should be appalled.

One stunning fact is that most Florida counties have already stopped using the death penalty. Just six of Florida’s 67 counties account for more than half of the state’s 89 executions. Four of those counties have been branded as “outliers” for their overuse of capital punishment. Orange County, prior to Aramis Ayala’s election, was among them. (Miami-Dade, Duval, and Pinellas are the others.)


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