Nebraska Repeals Death Penalty

The Nebraska leg­is­la­ture vot­ed 30 – 19 to over­ride the veto of Governor Pete Ricketts and abol­ish the death penal­ty. Nebraska becomes the 19^th state to repeal the death penal­ty, and the 7^th state to do so since 2007. It is the first pre­dom­i­nant­ly Republican state to abol­ish the death penal­ty in over 40 years, and state leg­is­la­tors said Republican sup­port was crit­i­cal to the bipar­ti­san repeal effort. Sen. Jeremy Nordquist said, ​“This would­n’t have hap­pened with­out the fis­cal­ly respon­si­ble Republicans who aren’t just behold­en to con­ser­v­a­tive talk­ing points, but are thought­ful about pol­i­cy.” Sen. Colby Coash cit­ed fis­cal con­cerns among his rea­sons for sup­port­ing repeal: ​“The tax­pay­ers have not got­ten the bang for their buck on this death penal­ty for almost 20 years. This pro­gram is bro­ken.” The spon­sor of the repeal bill, Independent Senator Ernie Chambers, opened the repeal debate with a ref­er­ence to the his­toric nature of the pend­ing vote. ​“This will be the shin­ing moment of the Nebraska Legislature,” he said. ​“The world, by anybody’s reck­on­ing, is a place filled with dark­ness, con­tention, vio­lence. We today can move to lift part of that cloud of dark­ness that has been hov­er­ing over this state for all these years.”

(G. Schulte and A. Gronewold, ​“Nebraska abol­ish­es death penal­ty in land­mark over­ride vote,” Associated Press, May 28, 2015; Joe Duggan, Paul Hammel and Martha Stoddard, ​“Hours of sus­pense, emo­tion lead up to a land­mark vote for leg­is­la­tors on repeal­ing death penal­ty,” Omaha World-Herald, May 27, 2015; Photo cred­it: NetNebraska) See Recent Legislative Activity and New Voices.