Hillary Clinton has eventually come around to recognizing that the death penalty is applied in a racist way, but she still supports keeping it:
Hillary Clinton said Wednesday that she does not support abolishing the death penalty, calling instead for a review of the practice and for it to be used in fewer cases.
“We have a lot of evidence now that the death penalty has been too frequently applied, and too often in a discriminatory way, so I think we have to take a hard look at it,” she said in response to a voter question in New Hampshire.
“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,” she continued....
Clinton has a complicated past when it comes to her outlook on criminal justice reform and the death penalty.... [A]s First Lady, she echoed her husband’s support for tough on crime policies and tough sentencing. During Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign, she traveled with him back to Little Rock, Arkansas so that he could personally preside over the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, a mentally ill black man.
But her support for capital punishment has waned as public support has also declined. When she ran for the U.S. Senate in 2000, she said that the death penalty had her “unenthusiastic support.” ...
People of color have accounted for a disproportionate 43 percent of total executions since 1976 and make up 55 percent of people awaiting execution, according to the ACLU. About one half of all murders involve white victims, but 80 percent of capital cases involve white victims.
Both Martin O'Malley and Bernie Sanders have long records of opposing the death penalty and working to eliminate it.
O'Malley put out a statement in response to Clinton's comments:
In a statement responding to Clinton's position, O'Malley said the death penalty "is [a] racially-biased, ineffective deterrent to crime, and we must abolish it."
"Our nation should not be in the company of Iran, Iraq, China, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen in carrying out the majority of public executions," he said. "That's why I abolished it in Maryland, because it is fundamentally at odds with our values. As President, I would work to build consensus to end it nationally."...
Clinton's position puts her at odds with Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, whom her husband, former president Bill Clinton, nominated to the bench in 1994 and who has lately come out as as a vocal opponent of the legality of the practice.
The same year he appointed Breyer, Clinton signed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 -- also known as the 1994 crime bill -- which vastly expanded the federal death penalty to about 60 offenses.
Bernie Sanders
has worked for decades to eliminate the death penalty:
Sanders has regularly voted against the death penalty while in office, according to analysis by PolitiFact.
He added during an interview on the Thom Hartmann Radio Show, "I'm against capital punishment in general," he said in May.
"With so much violence in this world today, I just don't think the state itself, whether the state or federal government, should be in the business of killing people. When you have people who have done terrible terrible things, they are going to spend the rest of their lives in jail and that's a pretty harsh punishment."
He's
opposed "tough on crime" policies for decades, as racially discriminatory, unfair to the poor, overly harsh, and ineffective:
Here he is in 1991 condemning a crime bill for promoting “state murder” through expansion of the death penalty:
“My friends, we have the highest percentage of people in jail per capita of any nation on earth....What do we have to do, put half the country behind bars? Mister Speaker, instead of talking about punishment and vengeance, let us talk about the real issue. How do we get to the root causes of crime? How do we stop crime? … I've got a problem with a president and Congress that allows five million people to go hungry, two million people to sleep out on the street, cities to become breeding grounds for drugs and violence. And they say we're getting tough on crime. If you want to get tough on crime, let's deal with the causes of crime. Let's demand that every man, woman, and child in this country have a decent opportunity and a decent standard of living. Let's not keep putting poor people into jail and disproportionately punishing blacks.”
He also voted for an amendment in the crime bill to eliminate the death penalty with life imprisonment.
Instead of talking about nonsensical manufactured "issues" like twisting someone's words into some kind of fake slur, this is a real issue, and a real difference between the candidates.
Between the two Democratic front-runners, one holds a long-established progressive position and the other does not, on this among many other issues.
The choice could hardly be clearer. Which side are you on?