Democratic Party endorses abolishing the death penalty, breaking with Hillary Clinton

The draft of the 2016 Democratic Party platform endorses abolishing the death penalty, a break with the views of its presumptive presidential nominee.

“We will abolish the death penalty, which has proven to be a cruel and unusual form of punishment. It has no place in the United States of America,” reads the document, which the Democratic National Committee released Friday afternoon.

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The 2012 platform did not call for an end to capital punishment, instead saying that “the death penalty must not be arbitrary.”

The position in the new platform is at odds with what Hillary Clinton has said she supports. In October, she acknowledged significant issues with the way the punishment has been used, but said it should not be ended altogether.

“We have a lot of evidence now that the death penalty has been too frequently applied, and too often in a discriminatory way,” she said. “So I think we have to take a hard look at it.”

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