Hillary Clinton Still Supports The Death Penalty In “Egregious Cases”

While speaking at a Politics & Eggs event in New Hampshire yesterday, Hillary Clinton was asked about her stance on capital punishment. "I do think there are certain egregious cases that still deserve the consideration of the death penalty," Clinton responded. Clinton's remarks come less than a week after President Obama took a more hardened stance against the death penalty than he has in the past. Though he has a similar philosophical view to Clinton's, he did note that capital punishment, as it is currently doled out, is "deeply troubling...gruesome, and clumsy." He told Bill Keller of the Marshall Project that the Department of Justice was investigating the issue, along with other reforms. Clinton, for her part, also noted practical issues with 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,” she said. “So I think we have to take a hard look at it." She also acknowledged that her vision of capital punishment is directly at odds with how it is practiced in the United States. State executions should be "limited and rare, as opposed to what we've seen in most states," Clinton said. Clinton's views on capital punishment place her to the right of primary rivals Martin O'Malley and Bernie Sanders, both of whom want to see it abandoned altogether. “The death penalty is racially biased, ineffective deterrent to crime, and we must abolish it,” O'Malley has said. Sanders acknowledged the horrific nature of some crimes, but says this is all the more reason to do away with capital punishment. "At a time of rampant violence and murder, the state should not be part of that process," he said today in a Senate speech.