In a comment on my post about Sam Brownback’s death penalty position, my friend Ben Fritz (formerly my co-editor at Spinsanity) makes an excellent point:

Though I’m not sure if this is what Brownback meant, there are people who
we’re not protected from even when they are in prison. Some prison
gangs, like the Aryan Brotherhood, continue to operate when the leaders
are in jail and even in solitary confinement. When I read about that,
it was the first time I really reconsidered my position on the death
penalty… since even supermax prisons weren’t preventing leaders of
the Aryan Brotherhood and other prison gangs from ordering murders. So
maybe I agree with Sam Brownback.

So when Brownback refers to bin Laden as an example, is he anticipating an Aryan Brotherhood-like problem there? That would make sense (though it’s hard to know in advance), but in any case this kind of hedged death penalty support is going to be a hard sell in a GOP primary.