Republican Legislators Introduce Bill to Repeal and Replace Utah’s Death Penalty

From [DPIC] Two conservative Republican legislators, both former supporters of capital punishment, have introduced legislation that would end death-penalty prosecutions in Utah. 

On January 18, 2022, the first day of the three-month 2022 legislative session in the deeply conservative state, State Representative V. Lowry Snow (pictured, left) and Senator Daniel McCay (pictured, right) introduced HB 147, which would prohibit the death penalty for aggravated murders committed after May 4, 2022 and for all other aggravated murders for which prosecutors had not filed a notice of intent to seek the death penalty before May 4, 2022. The measure has the support of victims’ family members, business leaders, and four prosecutors representing more than half the state’s population.

Aggravated murder is currently punishable in Utah by the death penalty, life in prison without possibility of parole, or a sentence of 25 years to life. HB 147 would repeal the death-penalty option and add a new non-capital sentencing alternative of 45 years to life. The bill would not affect the sentences of the seven men currently on the state’s death row.

Snow, the House sponsor of the bill, said “The reality is, of our system, in our state, in other states, it’s not a perfect system. But when we impose a death sentence, it is a perfect sentence. There’s nothing that is left after a person’s life is taken. It’s final. There is no way to correct that.” McCay told the editorial boards of the Deseret News and KSL.com that the death penalty “sets a false expectation for society, sets a false expectation for the victims and their families, and increases the cost to the state of Utah.”

Sharon Wright Weeks, whose sister and niece were murdered in 1984, has been an outspoken advocate for repeal. She spoke about how the death-penalty appeals process for Ron Lafferty, the man convicted of killing her family members, caused additional trauma for her family. “The vast majority of people have no idea what victims’ families are going through, going through this appellate process. It’s absolutely horrendous, and it’s mean,” she told The Independent. A meeting with her helped convince Rep. Snow to support abolition. 

“She expressed to me the trauma her family had been through, not just in terms of his two trials but the promise, the representation that was made by the state that he should be put to death, and now we were at 33, 34 years later, and it still hadn’t occurred,” he said. “In between, every time there was anything that happened in terms of him exercising his appellate rights or rehearing rights, or the second trial that the family had to go through, they had to relive again the tragic loss of her sister as well as her sister’s infant daughter.”