| New York Times | - |
LINCOLN,
Neb. - Nebraska on Wednesday became the first conservative state in
more than 40 years to abolish the death penalty, with lawmakers defying
their Republican governor, Pete Ricketts, a staunch supporter of capital
punishment who had lobbied ...
LINCOLN,
Neb. — Nebraska on Wednesday became the first conservative state in
more than 40 years to abolish the death penalty, with lawmakers defying
their Republican governor, Pete Ricketts, a staunch supporter of capital
punishment who had lobbied vigorously against banning it.
After
more than two hours of emotional speeches at the Capitol here, the
Legislature, by a 30-to-19 vote that cut across party lines, overrode
the governor’s veto of a bill repealing the state’s death penalty law.
After the repeal measure passed, by just enough votes to overcome the
veto, dozens of spectators in the balcony burst into celebration.
The
vote capped a monthslong battle that pitted most lawmakers in the
unicameral Legislature against the governor, many law enforcement
officials and some family members of murder victims whose killers are on
death row. The Legislature approved the repeal bill three times this
year, each time by a veto-proof majority, before sending it to Mr.
Ricketts’s desk. Adding to the drama, two senators who had previously
voted for repeal switched to support the governor at the last minute.
Opponents
of the death penalty here were able to build a coalition that spanned
the ideological spectrum by winning the support of Republican
legislators who said they believed capital punishment was inefficient,
expensive and out of place with their party’s values, as well as that of
lawmakers who cited religious or moral reasons for supporting the
repeal. Nebraska joins 18 other states and Washington, D.C., in banning
the death penalty.
Though
it is not clear that other Republican-dominated states will follow
Nebraska’s example, Wednesday’s vote came at a time when liberals and
conservatives have been finding common ground on a range of criminal
justice issues in Washington and around the country.
In
other states, Democrats and Republicans driven by different motivations
have formed alliances to limit the revenue that towns can collect from
traffic fines; to crack down on civil asset forfeiture, a practice that
disproportionately affects the poor; and to ease mandatory prison
sentences.
On
the presidential trail, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Senators Ted Cruz
and Rand Paul have all called for easing mandatory minimum sentences,
while other Republican candidates have embraced proposals to revamp bail
and expand drug treatment that have also been championed by Democrats.
Though it formally considers itself nonpartisan, the Nebraska
Legislature is dominated by Republicans.
Mr.
Ricketts, who fought against the repeal bill by appearing repeatedly in
television interviews and urging Nebraskans to pressure their senators
to oppose it, immediately denounced the vote.
“My
words cannot express how appalled I am that we have lost a critical
tool to protect law enforcement and Nebraska families,” he said in a
statement. “While the Legislature has lost touch with the citizens of
Nebraska, I will continue to stand with Nebraskans and law enforcement
on this important issue.”
In
a debate that was by turns somber, fiery and soul-searching, with
sprinklings of quotes from Ruth Bader Ginsburg, John Paul Stevens and
the Book of Genesis, senators stood to make last-minute pitches to try
to persuade the undecided. Some said that capital punishment should be
retained as a tool to punish the most heinous crimes. Others said that
the death penalty, which has not been used in Nebraska since 1997, was
irretrievably broken.
“Today
we are doing something that transcends me, that transcends this
Legislature, that transcends this state,” said Senator Ernie Chambers,
an independent from Omaha who sponsored the bill and has fought against
the death penalty for decades. “We are talking about human dignity.”
A
few senators argued that Nebraskans were still broadly in favor of
capital punishment, even if many Republicans in the Legislature had
turned away from it. Others said that they were deeply conflicted about
their vote to retain the death penalty. “Today I will sustain the
governor’s veto because I campaigned on it,” said Senator Tyson Larson,
two hours into the debate. “This might be the last time I give the state
the right to take a life, because I don’t think that they necessarily
should.”
The bill replaces capital punishment with life imprisonment.
The vote on Wednesday came just a day after Mr. Ricketts signed a veto
of the death penalty repeal bill in front of reporters assembled at the
Capitol and talked about a gruesome bank robbery in the city of Norfolk
in 2002 in which five people were shot to death as a compelling reason
that Nebraska should hold on to capital punishment. Two family members
of a woman who was shot during the robbery stood at the governor’s side.
Some Nebraskans said in interviews this week that they agreed with the governor.
“I’m
sure small-town, rural Nebraska communities are furious about the
repeal,” said Chris Spargen, a project specialist in his mid-20s, as he
rode his bike down a main thoroughfare in Ashland, 30 miles outside
Omaha. “I guess I’m technically falling under that as well.”
In
downtown Ceresco, Neb., about 18 miles north of Lincoln, Wayne
Ambrosias, owner of the Sweet Pea Market, said he did not want his tax
dollars used to pay for murderers to stay in prison for their entire
lives. And he echoed the governor’s statement that the lawmakers who
supported the death penalty repeal bill were out of touch with a widely
conservative public.
“I
don’t think the politicians are in line with the everyday people,” Mr.
Ambrosias said on Wednesday, just before the vote. “I think it’s more of
a political move. I don’t think the people are telling them that’s what
they want.”
But others said they saw the issue differently, rejecting the argument that the death penalty was necessary to deter crime.
“A
lot of times, murder is a crime of passion,” said Don Johnson, a
retired commercial fisherman from Alaska now living in Ceresco. “I don’t
think they think about the death penalty when they kill somebody or
somebody gets killed. I don’t think it’s a preventative measure at all.”
Mr.
Johnson, who considers himself an evangelical Protestant, said he saw
the issue less as a religious belief than a strictly personal one. Other
members of his church are in favor of the death penalty, he said,
though he admitted he could not quite reconcile the punishment with
Christianity.
“If you really follow Jesus’s teachings,” he said, “thou shall not kill, you know.”
Catholic
bishops in Nebraska issued a statement on Tuesday criticizing Mr.
Ricketts’s veto. “We remain convinced that the death penalty does not
deter crime, nor does it make Nebraska safer or promote the common good
in our state,” they said.
Since
2007, six states have abolished the death penalty: Maryland,
Connecticut, Illinois, New Mexico and New Jersey. According to the Death
Penalty Information Center, a research group opposed to the death
penalty, no conservative state has banned capital punishment since North
Dakota in 1973. The center defines a conservative state as having voted
Republican in the two most recent presidential elections.
Across
the country, efforts to execute criminals on death row have stalled in
the face of growing backlash against the death penalty and logistical
difficulties with lethal injections. Many states have had difficulty
obtaining lethal injection drugs, as European manufacturers, citing
moral and ethical objections, have refused to sell them to prisons in
the United States. Texas, which executes more inmates than any other
state, has only enough drugs to carry out one more lethal injection.
Searching
for alternatives in the face of drug shortages, some states have taken
other measures. In March, the Utah governor signed a law allowing firing
squads to be used for executions, and Arkansas, Wyoming and Idaho have
considered replacing lethal injections with firing squads.
Mr.
Ricketts tried to ward off concerns about the availability of drugs by
announcing this month that he had made arrangements with a
pharmaceutical company to obtain the necessary drugs for lethal
injections. Some lawmakers said that the governor had not actually
obtained the drugs, asserting that he was trying to sway legislators to
uphold his veto. Those lawmakers have also raised questions about
whether those drugs would be legal to use if the governor had obtained
them.
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