Hillary Clinton Comes Out in Favor of the Death Penalty

Hillary Clinton told a voter at a breakfast event in New Hampshire on Wednesday that she did not support abolishing the death penalty.

“We have a lot of evidence now that the death penalty has been too frequently applied, and too often in a discriminatory way,” Clinton said after being asked her position. “So I think we have to take a hard look at it.”

She added, “I do not favor abolishing it, however, because I do think there are certain egregious cases that still deserve the consideration of the death penalty, but I’d like to see those be very limited and rare, as opposed to what we’ve seen in most states.”

The topic had not been raised in the Democratic contest prior to these remarks. Failed attempts at lethal injection in several states have put the issue back in the spotlight.

Amy Chozick reports at The New York Times’ ‘First Draft’ blog:

Her statement immediately ignited an outcry from some liberals who hoped she would have taken a tougher stance against the death penalty. Mrs. Clinton’s two main Democratic rivals, Senator Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley, have called to abolish the death penalty.

“The death penalty is racially biased, ineffective deterrent to crime, and we must abolish it,” Mr. O’Malley said in a statement.

Mrs. Clinton expressed support for the death penalty when she ran for the Senate in 2000. Her husband, Bill, expanded the use of capital punishment as president by signing the 1994 federal crime bill, parts of which Mrs. Clinton denounced this spring in the first major policy speech of her 2016 campaign. In that speech, she called for an end to the era of mass incarceration and for improved relations between African-Americans and mostly white police forces, but she did not wade deeply into the death penalty.

Read more here.

— Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.