Death Penalty Abolished in New Mexico – Governor Says Repeal Will Make the State Safer

Governor Bill Richardson signed the bill abol­ish­ing the death penal­ty in New Mexico on March 18. New Mexico now becomes the 15^th state to aban­don cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and the 3^rd in the last 2 years, fol­low­ing recent actions in New Jersey and New York in 2007. The new law sub­sti­tutes the pun­ish­ment of life with­out parole for the death penal­ty in future cas­es. In a state­ment, Gov. Richardson cit­ed the 130 inmates freed from death row since 1973 and added, ​“The sad truth is the wrong per­son can still be con­vict­ed in this day and age, and in cas­es where that con­vic­tion car­ries with it the ulti­mate sanc­tion, we must have ulti­mate con­fi­dence, I would say cer­ti­tude, that the sys­tem is with­out flaw or prej­u­dice. Unfortunately, this is demon­stra­bly not the case.” Many fam­i­ly mem­bers of mur­der vic­tims applaud­ed the repeal: ​“This is recog­ni­tion of the false promise that the death penal­ty offered, and a real­iza­tion of how mur­der vic­tims’ fam­i­ly mem­bers’ needs can tru­ly be served,” said Lorry Post, Executive Director of Murder Victims’ Families for Reconciliation (MVFR). Cathy Ansheles of Santa Fe and a mem­ber of MVFR, react­ed to the bill’s pas­sage, ​“It’s a great relief to know that fam­i­lies will no longer be put through the tur­moil of the death penal­ty. Finally, resources can be direct­ed to where they will real­ly do the most good.”

In his state­ment, Gov. Richardson not­ed, ​“While today’s focus will be on the repeal of the death penal­ty, I want to make clear that this bill I’m sign­ing actu­al­ly makes New Mexico safer. With my sig­na­ture, we now have the option of sen­tenc­ing the worst crim­i­nals to life in prison with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole. They will nev­er get out of prison. Faced with the real­i­ty that our sys­tem for impos­ing the death penal­ty can nev­er be per­fect, my con­science com­pels me to replace the death penal­ty with a solu­tion that keeps soci­ety safe.” A statewide poll in 2008 had shown that 64% of New Mexicans sup­port­ed replac­ing the death penal­ty with life with­out parole and resti­tu­tion to vic­tims’ families.

After the bill was passed on March 13, the gov­er­nor lis­tened to con­stituents for advice on sign­ing it. The over­whem­ing major­i­ty of respons­es indi­cat­ed that the death penal­ty should be repealed. New Mexico car­ried out one exe­cu­tion in the past 30 years and had two peo­ple on death row.

(Posted Mar. 19, 2009). See DPIC’s Press Release on the bil­l’s sig­nif­i­cance in English and Spanish. See DPIC’s Fact Sheet for a list of oth­er states with­out the death penal­ty and for infor­ma­tion on exe­cu­tions and death row by state. See Recent Legislative Activity for leg­is­la­tion pend­ing in other states.