Hillary Clinton
Positions & Statements on the Issues
Should the Death Penalty Be Allowed?
This is such a profoundly difficult question and what I have said and what I continue to believe is that the states have proven themselves incapable of carrying out fair trials that give any defendant all the rights that a defendant should have, all the support that the defendant's lawyer should have. And I've said, I would breathe a sigh of relief if either the Supreme Court or the states themselves began to eliminate the death penalty. Where I end up is this, and maybe it's a distinction that's hard to support, but, at this point, given the challenges we face from terrorist activities, primarily in our country that end up under federal jurisdiction, for very limited purposes, I think it [the death penalty] can still be held in reserve for those. And the kind of crimes I'm thinking of are the bombing in Oklahoma City, where an American terrorist blew up the government building, killing, as I recall, 158 Americans, including a number of children who were in the preschool program. The plotters and the people who carried out the attacks on 9/11. But a very limited use of it in cases where there has [sic] been horrific mass killings. That's really the exception that I still am struggling with and would only be in the federal system
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