JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – The Senate Committee on General Laws and Pensions will hear a bill to repeal the death penalty Tuesday.
The bill, SB 816, is sponsored by Sen. Paul Wieland, R-Imperial, has received immense grassroots support from a group called Missouri Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty. The group, which is joined in support by members of the Students for Life, College Republicans, and the Missouri Federalist Society, credits growing grassroots support for the early session hearing.
“Sen. Wieland is the true pro-life leader in Jefferson City,” said Daniel Blassi, president of Students for Life at Southeast Missouri State University and member of Missouri Conservatives Concerned about the Death Penalty. “We may aim to execute only the guilty, but in practice, the death penalty puts too many innocent lives at risk.”
A similar bill has been filed in the House by Republican Rep. T.J. Berry, R-Kansas City, and has received Republican co-sponsorship and support.
Both Republican House and Senate members have filed legislation to repeal the death penalty. Lawmakers have shared various reasons for wanting to consider repeal, ranging from possible exonerations to cowardice.
One of the four new Republican cosponsors of this year’s House repeal bill, Rep. Jim Neely, R – Cameron, signed onto the bill for the first time this year after feeling that the death penalty is too easy of a way out for criminals that commit heinous acts.
“The perverts that perpetrate horrific crimes – people like David Zink – deserve much crueler punishment than we can constitutionally carry out as a State,” said Neely. “Our best legal option is to lock these people away and force them to do hard labor until they die.”
In June of 2015, Zink, 55, was executed in Missouri for the abduction, sexual assault and murder of 19-year-old Amanda Morton in 2001, a killing authorities described as “an unspeakable act of violence.”
“For those who remain on death row, understand that everyone is going to die,” Zink said in his final statement. “Statistically speaking, we have a much easier death than most, so I encourage you to embrace it . . . before society figures it out and condemns us to life without parole and we too will die a lingering death,” he said.
Other grassroots supporters of the effort support it because of distrust in government competency.
“The government is incompetent at just about everything,” said Jennifer Bukowsky, a Republican attorney who takes on pro bono cases for Missourians imprisoned for murder despite actual innocence claims. “So how can we trust them to kill the right people and to do it in the right way?”
Gary Nolan, host of the nationally-syndicated conservative radio talk show, The Gary Nolan Show, agrees with Bukowsky.
“I want to make it clear that I don’t have a moral problem with executing some people; what I have a problem with is our system of justice,” said Nolan. “If you’ve got people who are confessing to a crime of murder, who might ultimately get the death penalty even though they didn’t commit the murder, then you have do a rethink.”
Others have begun to feel the death penalty is at odds with the core conservative values of fiscal responsibility, limited government, and value for life.
“Heinous criminals deserve swift justice, but it’s difficult to justify a government program that siphons millions of dollars from Missouri taxpayers despite the lack of evidence that it deters crime,” said Jake Buxton, Chair of the College Republicans at Truman State University. “Our State can’t afford the death penalty as it stands.”
The Senate hearing will be held Tuesday at 3 p.m. in Senate Committee Room 1 of the State Capitol. For more information visit moconservativesconcerned.org.
Rachael Herndon was the editor at The Missouri Times and also produced This Week in Missouri Politics, published Missouri Times Magazine, and co-hosted the #MoLeg podcast. She joined The Missouri Times in 2014, returning to political reporting after working as a campaign and legislative staffer.
Rachael studied at the University of Missouri – Columbia. She lives in Jefferson City with her husband, Brandon, and their two children.
