Efforts to end death penalty gain steam

At the state level, calls for an end to the death penalty are coming from an unlikely corner of the political spectrum: Conservatives.

Nebraska’s legislature, ostensibly nonpartisan but in practice controlled by Republicans, made headlines in 2015 by repealing the death penalty.

Utah’s Republican state Senate passed a repeal bill earlier this year, though it died in the state House. In Kentucky, where Republicans only recently gained control of the state Senate, a Senate committee held hearings on a repeal vote, the first such hearing since 1976. Another repeal measure stalled on a tie vote in Montana’s legislature, where Republicans are in control.

“You’re going to see more conservative states moving toward repeal,” said Marc Hyden, a former National Rifle Association staffer who now runs Conservatives Concerned about the Death Penalty. “The death penalty is dying out.”

While 30 states allow capital punishment, the governors of four of those states — Washington, Oregon, Colorado and Pennsylvania — have set a moratorium on executions while they are in office. Twenty states do not allow executions.