Scott Powers
A handful of Republicans and Libertarians gathered in Orlando Wednesday to announce formation of a conservative group to oppose Florida’s death penalty, yet tried hard to distance themselves from controversial and progressive anti-death penalty State Attorney Aramis Ayala, whose office was only 30 feet away.
The group Florida Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty is an offshoot of a national group Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty seeking to get death penalty laws repealed state-by-state.
“We believe the death penalty is inconsistent with our core conservative values,” said Marc Hyden, national advocacy coordinator with the group.
On Wednesday Hyden was joined by several Republican public defenders and Libertarian and Republican activists, including public defenders Rex Dammie for Florida’s 10th Judicial Circuit, James Purdy, for the 7th Judicial Circuit, and Mike Graves for Florida’s 5th Judicial Circuit; and Brian Empric, former vice chairman of the Florida Federation of Young Republicans.
They argued that Florida’s death penalty law is on the verge of being overwhelmed as the Florida Supreme Court is remanding as many as 200 cases back for new sentencing phases, after the laws were struck down twice in the past two years.
They brought four principal arguments that they said should place conservatives in opposition to Florida’s death penalty: that it is fiscally irresponsible, costing twice as much per case as a non-capital murder trial; that it is not an appropriate function of limited government; that it is against many conservatives belief in the sanctity of life; and that there are too many possibilities of wrongful execution of an innocent people.
Those are some of the same arguments Ayala made in March when she made her controversial declaration, from a spot just a few feet away, that she would not pursue the death penalty in Florida’s 9th Judicial Circuit, covering Orange and Osceola counties.
Yet Hyden and others at Wednesday’s press conference never mentioned Ayala by name during their presentations. Afterwards, they tried hard to disassociate from her, insisting they had never had any contact or connections with her or any of the progressive groups supporting her, and that their agendas were different.
That denial was called into question during the press conference by the father of one of the murder victims in an Orange County case. Rafael Zaldivar, father of slain Alex Zaldivar, who was murdered by Bessman Okafor, pressed Hyden and others to acknowledge that progressive anti-death penalty rainmaker George Soros had backed Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty’s parent organization, Equal Justice USA.
Hyden said he was unaware if Soros had donated to Equal Justice USA, but insisted that the group has a broad contributor base and that donors have included conservative rainmaker Charles Koch. He argued that if Soros and Koch agreed on something it must mean that opposition of the death penalty draws both progressives and conservatives, which he said was the point of their press conference.
Zaldivar was unconvinced, calling the Florida group “a fake conservative group” and claiming it is controlled by Soros, who also invested heavily in electing Ayala last summer.
“This is a group that travels around the country pushing their agenda. They’re not even from here,” Zaldivar told reporters later. “They’re not conservatives at all. They’re a bunch of fruitcakes, basically.”
