02/20/15 – Marc Hyden – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, you guys, welcome back to the show here.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, The Scott Horton Show.
And first up today is Mark Hyden from Conservatives Concerned about the death penalty.
The website is conservativesconcerned.org.
Welcome back to the show, Mark.
How are you doing?
I'm doing great, Scott.
Thanks for having me back on.
Good, good.
I'm very happy to have you here, and I really support the work you guys are doing.
I think it's really important, and especially on law and order issues, does hardly any good for bleeding-heart liberals and libertarians to wail and cry about injustice.
But when conservatives can attack the right from the right and say, hey, if we want real law and order, we need to roll back these things that are getting out of control, that kind of thing, that can be very powerful, can make such a big difference.
So, you know, one conservativesconcerned.org is worth 100 liberal or libertarian concerned about the death penalty type sites or movements, I'm afraid to say, but at the same time, you know, I think it's great what you guys are doing for that reason.
So tell me, what is it about the death penalty that's got you and your compadres here at Conservatives Concerned about the death penalty that's got you so concerned that you're willing to put aside the, you know, at least typical, I don't want to assume too much about your prior beliefs or whatever, but the typical conservative support for the death penalty as the ultimate in law and order for some of the absolutely heinous crimes committed by people in this country?
Well, I think any time that we're able to work together, whether it's the left and the right or libertarians and conservatives working together, we should try to.
But this is an issue that can bring us all together, even in this age of when bipartisanship is so taboo.
But when you look at the death penalty, the way it's run today, it runs contrary to many of our foundational principles.
It risks innocent life, and we know this because there's been so many wrongful convictions and so many people that have been executed when there was serious doubt regarding the veracity of their verdict.
And then it's more costly than life without parole.
It's even led to tax increases.
So it's not physically responsible.
And, Scott, I got to tell you, I don't find anything limited about giving an error-prone state the power to kill its citizens.
So it's not limited to government.
And then we find out that it doesn't deter murder, and it even harms murder victims' family members.
And I've been told over and over again that capital punishment is there for the murder victims' family members.
But even they are speaking out against it now.
All right.
And so now for my own personal thing, and I think this represents, you know, as you mentioned too, it's really just the question of reliability.
We have an adversarial system, although, you know, it's been so many precedents set now about what's admissible and not admissible, even as far as defenses that people are allowed to put on.
I think just that kind of basic premise is in question really now.
But even if it's not, even if we live in a kind of Matlockian system where it works the way it's supposed to, you better have Matlock on your side or you might just go to prison, right?
So mistakes are made no matter what.
When the system is working perfectly, mistakes still get made, that kind of thing.
And that's such an important thing for people to understand that, you know, hey, he was convicted doesn't necessarily mean he was guilty.
It means he's considered guilty under the law kind of thing.
But, you know, for me, people mostly still get the benefit of the doubt until I hear the details of the case myself.
And it seems like I think people more and more feel that way, that the system just can't be trusted, especially, like you say, with a final verdict like this.
If somebody's in prison for 40 years, if they don't die in there, they can still eventually get out.
I read about some people who got out of prison after false convictions today.
But if they're dead, they can't.
That's just it's it's just given it's setting us up for the kind of mistakes that cannot be fixed.
Even though even though we all agree, I think so many of us anyway, agree in this country that some criminals do deserve to die.
It's just there.
It's a separate question of whether we're going to allow our governments to do the killing or anybody else.
Yeah, you're right, Scott.
And actually, I was I was talking to the Georgia Tea Party last night in Marietta, Georgia.
They they had me come in as a speaker.
And a lot of the minds were changed once I told them how dangerous this program was, how many mistakes are made and how oftentimes there's actually prosecutorial misconduct leading to wrongful convictions.
So a lot of people change their minds on the spot.
But I did have a couple that were struggling.
And they said, we really need to have this death penalty for the most heinous of murders.
So I had to remind them that the death penalty, the way it's run, it doesn't execute the most heinous of murders.
That's just not how it works.
But if you do want a system that executes the worst of the worst, you have to have a broader system in place.
And if you believe that governments and humans are fallible, you have to be willing to accept a certain amount of collateral damage.
So I'd ask them how many innocent lives are they willing to execute to get the real bad guys?
And of course, they couldn't give me an answer on that.
Right.
Well, and, you know, it's frustrating, too, when some of these stories, there's just no question.
The guy's caught completely red handed.
He admits it.
Everybody knows he did it.
There's 100 witnesses, whatever, whatever.
Some of these really are beyond a shadow of a doubt.
And yet that's not a separate standard.
It's simply beyond a reasonable doubt.
And that's in the minds of 12 random you don't know who's and under the impression that they're left with under the process, the way it's set up.
So that is a far cry from, you know, we all agree beyond a shadow of a doubt kind of situation.
Yeah, that's that's correct.
And actually, if you want to look and see who actually receives a death penalty, it's based on location.
It's based on what county you're in, because most counties don't use the death penalty.
They can't even afford to use it.
And then you have to look at whether or not the kind of a defense attorney that the accused receives, because oftentimes they get really bad attorneys.
Some of them in the past weren't even criminal defense attorneys.
I can think of one example where he was an insurance attorney.
So oftentimes it's poor representation that leads to this.
But one of the things that you can point at, if you look at the race of the victim, that's often a good indicator of whether or not they're going to seek the death penalty or not.
Oh, yeah.
And probably especially when it's cross referenced with the race of the perpetrator, as in black on white murders, get the death penalty more than any other one.
Certainly.
Right.
All right.
So now tell us quickly, what are you doing about it, Mark?
You know, I'm traveling the United States.
I'm going to conservative groups.
I'm going to libertarian groups, tea parties, colleges and all sorts of conferences.
And I'm just trying to educate people.
Whether or not you support the death penalty in theory or biblically, our government doesn't run the program well or up to theoretical or up to biblical standards.
And if we really are skeptical about government power, then we have to be willing to look at this program because I don't believe there's a bigger government power than one that can take your life away.
So this is a this is a program we need to revisit.
We're changing hearts and minds one at a time.
And I'm very positive in my outlook.
I know that Republican support for capital punishment actually had a five point swing in a single year.
And I'd like to think that we were part of that.
But that's the largest swing.
That was larger than the past 19 years combined.
So minds minds are starting to change.
And support for capital punishment is near a 40 year low.
And I think capital punishment is slowly becoming obsolete here in the United States.
As more people learn about how dangerous and wasteful this program is.
Awesome.
And now you're doing CPAC here real quick, real soon.
I know that.
And are you trying to get these other groups to come out as groups in favor of your position here?
Well, I'd be happy to see more groups come out against the death penalty.
And we formed a strategic partnership with the Young Americans for Liberty and Jeff Frazee.
They're leaders against capital punishment.
He's one of our supporters.
The Liberty Coalition.
Also, we formed a partnership with them and their leaders.
Michael Osterling, who's also a supporter of ours and came out against the death penalty.
So I'd be happy to work with many other organizations that are already out in criminal justice reform.
And hopefully get them to stand up and talk about a broken government program that we need to get rid of.
You should talk with Grover Norquist and bring him on as a deficit hawk on this.
As a fiscal hawk.
And how just the death penalty racket and how much money is wasted.
And all the extra appeals and all the extra process and all that.
I bet you that might be a good avenue to try to go down.
Oh, you bet.
And I've met with him before and talked with some of his supporters.
And there's no shortage of examples of the death penalty causing horrible budget decisions, leading to tax increases and even leading municipalities to mortgage all their ambulances in order to try to execute someone.
So this is a conversation we can have.
Yeah, absolutely.
All right.
It's heroic work.
Thank you so much for coming back on the show.
I appreciate it, Mark.
Thanks for having me on.
All right, y'all.
That's Mark Hyden.
He's at ConservativesConcerned.org.
That's Conservatives Concerned about the death penalty.
Hey, Al.
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