A long-held stereotype is that conservatives in this country favor capital punishment, while liberals oppose it. But that doesn’t accord with reality: In recent years, more conservatives have come to realize that capital punishment conflicts irreconcilably with their principles of valuing life, fiscal responsibility and limited government. Many conservatives also recognize that the death penalty inflicts extreme and unnecessary trauma on the family members of victims and the correctional employees who have the job of taking the prisoner’s life.

It’s been 16 years since the federal government carried out an execution. Last week, however, the Justice Department announced that it had scheduled executions in December and January for five inmates. As a lifelong conservative, I believe this is a step in the wrong direction. The problems that have plagued the death penalty at the state level — the risk of executing the innocent, arbitrariness and bias, high costs, a lack of deterrence and the failure to deliver “closure” to victims’ families — exist at the federal level too.

In federal cases, as in the states, we have been unable to eradicate arbitrariness from the death penalty lottery. Whether a defendant receives a death sentence is often more dependent on what state he is prosecuted in than on the relative seriousness of his offense. Like state death sentences, federal death sentences are geographically concentrated. Just three states — Missouri, Texas and Virginia — are responsible for almost half of all federal death sentences.

Contrary to what many might think, the federal death penalty is not reserved for a small number of uniquely federal crimes. Only one person is on federal death row for terrorism. No one is there for espionage or treason. Every person on death row in the federal system could have been prosecuted in the state courts; some of them already had been, and prosecutors pursued death sentences in federal court only after state juries had returned prison sentences.