A mea­sure to repeal Nebraska​’s death penal­ty and replace it with a sen­tence of life with­out parole fell one vote short of mov­ing to the sec­ond of three stages in con­sid­er­a­tion by the uni­cam­er­al leg­is­la­ture. It was the first time the full leg­is­la­ture had debat­ed the death penal­ty in near­ly two decades. The mea­sure’s defeat fol­lowed two days of debate about cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, includ­ing whether deci­sions to impose the death penal­ty reflect social, eco­nom­ic or racial bias. In addi­tion, some leg­is­la­tors crit­i­cized the state’s death penal­ty as arbi­trary in nature.

Legislators admit­ted that they wres­tled with the issue as both a mat­ter of pub­lic pol­i­cy and con­science. Senator Brad Ashford, chair­man of the Judiciary Committee, said that he found the pun­ish­ment to be arbi­trary because there are inmates serv­ing life sen­tences in the state whose crimes were every bit as heinous as those com­mit­ted by the peo­ple on Nebraska’s death row. Senator Tom Carlson, who clas­si­fied him­self as ​“pro-life,” said, ​“To be con­sis­tent­ly pro-life, maybe I should oppose the death penal­ty.” In the end, Carlson and Ashford were both among the 24 leg­is­la­tors who vot­ed to advance the bill for more debate. Twenty-five leg­is­la­tors vot­ed against advace­ment. The bil­l’s spon­sor, Senator Ernie Chambers, said he would try to win pas­sage of a sim­i­lar mea­sure next year.

(Nebraska State Paper, March 20, 2007). See Recent Legislative Activity and Life Without Parole.

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