By Michelle L. Price
Associated Press
SALT LAKE CITY — Some Utah lawmakers on Wednesday debated whether repealing the death penalty would be moral and just while saving the state money. But they acknowledged that capital punishment still has strong support in the conservative state and is unlikely to be repealed soon.
Lawmakers on an interim judiciary committee discussed the idea for about two hours in a mostly empty hearing room and took no official action.
The committee was tasked with studying the issue after a Democratic lawmaker requested a review earlier this year.
Eagle Mountain Sen. Mark Madsen, a Republican who co-chairs the committee, told reporters after the session that no legislation to repeal the punishment is planned but he would support such a proposal.
During the hearing, Madsen said he has no moral compunction about eye-for-an-eye punishment.
“I’d pull the switch if I knew that the person was guilty,” he said Still, he said the possibility of unreliable DNA tests, faulty prosecutions or corruption in the judicial system made him question whether it’s worth having a death penalty knowing there’s a risk an innocent person could be executed.
“I’m about as conservative as you’re going to find,” he said. “But it is not a conservative value to have blind, slavish faith in government.”
Rep. Mark Wheatley, a Democrat from Murray, said he feels the death penalty has no redeeming value.
“I don’t believe the state should be involved in revenge,” he said.
Sen. Lyle Hillyard, a Logan Republican, said there is fierce support for capital punishment, particularly from people whose loved ones suffered gruesome deaths, sometimes at the hands of serial killers.
“I think you’re going to have a lot of people here with very strong emotional stories for you,” he said. “I’m willing to talk about it, but I think it’s not as simple as hearing just one side.”
Layton Republican Rep. Stephen Handy, who led legislative talks on the issue three years ago, said state researchers calculated that each capital case costs taxpayers about $1.7 million more than a sentence for life in prison, assuming each inmate spends about 20 years on death row appealing their sentence.
It costs Utah about $1.7 million a year to manage and respond to appeals of about 10 inmates on death row. Utah currently has nine death row inmates.
Handy said he doesn’t know of anyone planning a bill to repeal the punishment and noted that Utah in fact bolstered the sentence earlier this year.
The Legislature and Gov. Gary Herbert approved a law allowing the use of a firing squad as a backup execution method if lethal injection drugs are not available.
The lawmaker who pushed that bill, Republican Rep. Paul Ray of Clearfield, is planning legislation next year that would allow Utah to execute criminals convicted of child sex trafficking.
Handy said it seems there’s little appetite to ban capital punishment in Utah, something he said is unfortunate.