For Texas conservatives, a death-penalty discussion

AUSTIN — While there’s a common perception that death-penalty opposition comes from the liberals, a conservative network that opposes capital punishment is growing, and headed toward Texas.

Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty is a national organization operating in GOP bastions such as Tennessee, Georgia and Utah, with new state-level efforts launched this summer.

“We recently formed a Florida chapter,” said Brian Bensimon, who earlier this week a met with Austin conservatives to talk up the network. “Texas is not far away from forming a chapter.”

A 2014 poll by the Kinder Institute suggests that there could be support, given that 69 percent of those surveyed in Houston preferred alternative sentences to the death penalty, up from 54 percent in 2010.

Democratic-leaning Houston isn’t representative of Texas, a state that last week executed TaiChin Preyor, bringing to five its total number of executions so far in 2017, but Bensimon said that younger conservatives here are receptive to capital-punishment alternatives, such as life-without-parole sentences for a number of reasons. 

“Often it’s a hand-me-down position you get from your parents,” Bensimon said of views on capital punishment. “They’re going to realize if you believe in limited government, the death penalty is not in accord with those values.”

Capitalizing on the growing power of Millennial voters could be key if Texas is to join the 31 states and the District of Columbia, which, according to the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, have abandoned the death penalty in “law or in practice.” 

A Pew Research Center released Wednesday showed that for the first time, Millennial and Gen X voters outnumbered Boomers and older voters, 69.6 million to 67.9 million in the 2016 elections. 

“If past trends continue … Millennials will end up voting at even higher rates than Gen Xers when they reach the age of peak participation,” Pew reported.

But even older Texas conservatives such as Donald Trump supporter Helene Burns are ready to pull the plug on capital punishment.

Burns is 61, an Austin nurse and a Baby Boomer.

In August 1978, Burns’ father killed her mother in California.

“He was a very good shot,” Burns said. “He blew her brains out.”

But instead of the death penalty, she urged the court to sentence her father, now 82, to life without the possibility of parole. 

“The death penalty is a failed government program,” Burns said. “And it’s very expensive.”

In 2015, defense attorney Fred Dahr estimated the cost was $3.8 million for a death-penalty case, versus $1.8 million to seek life in prison, according to a Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty fact sheet.

“It goes straight to the Court of Criminal Appeals, then federal appeals,” once a defendant is convicted, said Pat Monks, a Houston defense attorney and founding supporter of Conservatives Concerned about the Death Penalty. “We’re not killing chickens.

“It’s too expensive to get what you want out of it. On life without parole, you can pretty much put somebody away and never hear from them again.”

Five executions are slated to take place in Texas through November, but new Texas death sentences are down almost 80 percent since 1999, according to the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

Like Bensimon, Thomas Johnson has worked to get out word of the Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty, and to bring the practice to a dead end.

He’s concerned about costs constitutional rights implications of the death penalty, but said adherents come on board for a variety of reasons.

“You are seeing a growth of conservatives who say ‘my values don’t fit in this,’ ” Johnson said. “And then you say, ‘do I change my values or do I change my position.’”

John Austin covers the Texas Statehouse for CNHI’s newspapers and websites. Reach him at jaustin@cnhi.com.