Nebraska lawmakers vote to ban death penalty, by margin big enough to override veto

[Suzanimal]

Nebraska lawmakers vote to ban death penalty, by margin big enough to override veto

The death penalty may be holding on by its last thread in Nebraska.

State lawmakers are within reach of making Nebraska the only red state in recent years to ban the death penalty, voting 32 to 15 on Wednesday to end the practice at a time when capital punishment has received increased scrutiny at the national level.

Nebraska's Republican governor, Pete Ricketts, will veto the bill, his spokesman told the Los Angeles Times. Before the vote, Ricketts issued a warning to lawmakers: "No one has traveled the state more than I have in the past 18 months, and everywhere I go there is overwhelming support for keeping the death penalty in Nebraska."

The repeal, the governor said in a statement, would "give our state's most heinous criminals more lenient sentences."

Such defiance from the governor may only be symbolic. Lawmakers in the state's single-chamber Legislature appear to have a veto-proof majority, assembled from a coalition of civil-rights advocates and religious conservatives.

"We are so thrilled, but this has been such a long time in the making," Amy Miller, the legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Nebraska, told The Times.

The death penalty is still favored across the U.S. by almost a 2-to-1 margin, according to Gallup's most recent poll, in October, and Nebraska is one of the nation's more conservative states.


But the Great Plains state -- which only has 11 men on death row and which hasn't carried out an execution since 1997 -- has long had an abolitionist streak, one often thwarted by law-and-order governors.

Nebraska lawmakers voted to ban executions in 1979, only to see a governor veto the effort. A temporary moratorium in 1999 was also vetoed, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. The nonpartisan Legislature also came within a vote of passing a ban in 2007.

Wednesday's successful measure was sponsored by Sen. Ernie Chambers, a longtime lawmaker and well-known iconoclast in state politics who regularly shows up to sessions in jeans and short-sleeved shirts and who has pushed for a death penalty ban every year.

"The record should be crystal clear on what it is we are doing: It is historic," Chambers said Wednesday, according to the Omaha World-Herald. "We have the opportunity to take one small step for the Legislature, a giant leap for civilization."

Chambers wasn't immediately available for comment Wednesday -- he was still on the floor as the session continued -- but transcripts from a floor debate on April 16 showed the extent to which the death penalty had come under crossfire from a thicket of diverse political perspectives.

Chambers said he was "surprised" by the number of colleagues supporting the ban, for many of whom the issue was deeply personal.

Sen. Colby Coash said his views changed when he went to the penitentiary as a college student to watch and support an execution.

"There was a side there that thought it was a party, and they had a barbecue, and they had a countdown like it was New Year's Eve," Coash said, according to a legislative transcript. "They had a band. Can you imagine that, colleagues? A band at an execution. And on the other side of the parking lot were people who were quietly praying, trying to be a witness to life, trying to understand how their government could end a life. And I was on the wrong side of that debate that night, and I never forgot it. ... The death penalty is not justice, it is revenge."

...

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-...520-story.html

[Occam's Banana]

Good!

[...] Sen. Lydia Brasch said[,] "I go back to my mother's haunting words: The state should not take away a life until they have the ability to give it back. [...]"

[Anti Federalist]

But the Great Plains state -- which only has 11 men on death row and which hasn't carried out an execution since 1997 -- has long had an abolitionist streak, one often thwarted by law-and-order governors.

Gah, I do dislike the GOP "law and order" crowd.

This is great news...keep pushing!

Every story of an innocent released, every post, every person you talk to, every tweet, every one makes a difference.

There is a real pushback happening.

[Suzanimal]

Official Killing
Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

Writes Jon Crane:

Once again, I am reaching out to you on behalf of Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty.



Today, Gov. Ricketts is expected to veto the repeal bill. He is holding a news conference at 3pm central time. The Nebraska legislature’s override vote could come as early as tomorrow. I wanted to make sure that you knew.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/official-killing/

[RandallFan]

http://www.cjlf.org/releases/11-14.htm

Scheidegger pointed to the most recent Bureau of Justice Statistics report on capital punishment, which indicates that as of December 31, 2009, the nation’s death row population totaled 3,173 of whom 1,317 were blacks. That is 41.5%.

“Paul got it wrong on this, but more importantly he seemed unaware that, according to the U. S. Department of Justice statistics, about half of all murderers are black. The facts show that, among murderers, blacks are receiving the death penalty somewhat less often than others convicted of murder.”

Rand Paul must not screw up, by believing the hipster polls on gay marriage, death penalty and amnesty for illegals.

The political polling on the death penalty is not the same as the 30-19 vote.

[osan]

I don't have a problem with this, especially given the fact that once carried out, the dead cannot be recalled.

However, if we dispense with executions, I see no reason that parties guilty of crimes so heinous should be treated to life sentences of cable TV, gaysex, freely available drugs, and all that sort of thing. Turning large rocks into small ones is more to my way of thinking, if you are to allow them any activity at all. Solitary might be too cruel... or perhaps not, I've not given it close consideration. But confinement 23 hours a day in a one-man cell of small proportions might be a just and fitting sentence. I would happily trade the death penalty away in exchange for freeing all the petty drug convicts. That, of course, will never happen, what with privatized for-profit prisons on the rise. Could an idea be more demented than that?

[angelatc]

http://www.cjlf.org/releases/11-14.htm

Scheidegger pointed to the most recent Bureau of Justice Statistics report on capital punishment, which indicates that as of December 31, 2009, the nation’s death row population totaled 3,173 of whom 1,317 were blacks. That is 41.5%.

“Paul got it wrong on this, but more importantly he seemed unaware that, according to the U. S. Department of Justice statistics, about half of all murderers are black. The facts show that, among murderers, blacks are receiving the death penalty somewhat less often than others convicted of murder.”



Rand Paul must not screw up, by believing the hipster polls on gay marriage, death penalty and amnesty for illegals.

The political polling on the death penalty is not the same as the 30-19 vote.

No reason to give the government permission to kill us.

[Suzanimal]

Nebraska citizens to vote on death penalty: Repeal should stay in place

Last year, when the Nebraska State Legislature repealed the use of the death penalty, overriding Governor Ricketts’ veto and achieving bipartisan support, I was ecstatic. It seemed like such a progressive measure: conservatives uniting with liberals and citing a mosaic of religious, economic and social reasons, putting a penalty that did not work for Nebraska or Nebraskans in the past.

But something troubling happened after the veto was overridden, the repeal became official and news outlets around the country hailed the unicameral’s bipartisan achievement. Governor Rick-etts, with a few senators, began to agitate against the measure. I was troubled by how much of Ricketts’ personal fortune he began funneling into a referendum effort, paying political strategists who knew which areas to avoid in order to get their signatures, paying petition gatherers who would spin the referendum as a matter of voter rights, not a matter of life and death.

His organization, Nebraskans for the Death Penalty, is grotesque. I was horrified that an organization that dedicated itself to the pursuit of death could be taken seriously and indeed that a sitting governor would conduct himself in such a way as Ricketts, pouring his mon-ey and his family’s money into this death race. What was once a shining moment for Nebraska, as one of the first conservative states to repeal the death penalty, became another moment ruined by Ricketts, as national news outlets began to notice the corruption and Ricketts’ frantic attempts to kill.

The petition drive was successful, halting the progress of the repeal measure, but Ricketts ran into nagging troubles on his desperate quest to execute the ten men in his prisons. Nebraska was embarrassed again and again as his fumbling to procure illegal drugs, his failure to smuggle them into the country and his failed requests for a refund to his drug dealer, were revealed to a laughing national eye.

Finally, in November, we will vote to put this all behind us, one way or the other.

It should go without saying that this is a bipartisan issue. One of the most troubling falsehoods the death-penalty backers propagate is that the initial repeal was the result of a liberal legislature that was out of touch with its citizens. But in reality, the movement would not have passed without a very strong conservative coalition, voting from their hearts and minds.

...

http://unothegateway.com/nebraska-ci...al-stay-place/

[osan]

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-...520-story.html

For the worst of crimes, life in solitary confinement should be the standard penalty. You spend it in a small cell, bare of wall, and no contact with humans ever again. You hear no human voice. See no face. Feel no touch, and so on. All that you are left with is your life, thoughts, and absolutely nothing else. Food is mechanically delivered to you. You eat, and return the tray to a hole. If you become ill, you are given drugs to render you unconscious, are treated while asleep, and awaken again to your empty, dead cell. If you refuse to cooperate, all protocols are suspended (e.g. no food) until either you die or you decide to cooperate.

When one proves he is unfit for the society of his fellows, all trappings thereof should be removed from his life. If such a circumstance proves a living hell for him, too bad.

This approach provides utmost punishment for those deserving of death without killing them. It is reversible, whereas death is not. I am on the fence as to whether such people should be provided with the means for suicide.

Anyone falsely causing another to meet with this fate should be required to suffer equally, day for day, loss for loss, torment for torment.

Anyone recall the case where a man kidnapped a woman in CA and amputated all her limbs and left her to die? She lived. Those are the sorts of crimes for which such a sentence is appropriate. The murder of Sharon Tate presents another fine example.

[tod evans]

Government and her lawyers have p[roved their inadequacy when doling out the death penalty.

Such matters rightly fall to family members, not bureaucrats.

[mtr1979]

Nebraskan voters brought back death penalty.

http://www.omaha.com/news/politics/w...aef27924b.html

[Superfluous Man]

Gah, I do dislike the GOP "law and order" crowd.

Careful. With the new direction this site is taking, this kind of talk could be interpreted as not sufficiently pro-Trump.

[The Northbreather]

For the worst of crimes, life in solitary confinement should be the standard penalty. You spend it in a small cell, bare of wall, and no contact with humans ever again. You hear no human voice. See no face. Feel no touch, and so on. All that you are left with is your life, thoughts, and absolutely nothing else. Food is mechanically delivered to you. You eat, and return the tray to a hole. If you become ill, you are given drugs to render you unconscious, are treated while asleep, and awaken again to your empty, dead cell. If you refuse to cooperate, all protocols are suspended (e.g. no food) until either you die or you decide to cooperate.

When one proves he is unfit for the society of his fellows, all trappings thereof should be removed from his life. If such a circumstance proves a living hell for him, too bad.

This approach provides utmost punishment for those deserving of death without killing them. It is reversible, whereas death is not. I am on the fence as to whether such people should be provided with the means for suicide.

Anyone falsely causing another to meet with this fate should be required to suffer equally, day for day, loss for loss, torment for torment.

Anyone recall the case where a man kidnapped a woman in CA and amputated all her limbs and left her to die? She lived. Those are the sorts of crimes for which such a sentence is appropriate. The murder of Sharon Tate presents another fine example.

Meh I say let the victim or kin thereof sort it out and do not indict the punisher.