The lat­est effort by death-penal­ty pro­po­nents to rein­state the death penal­ty in New Mexico has died in a House com­mit­tee. House Bill 155, which would have brought back the death penal­ty for mur­ders of chil­dren, police offi­cers, and cor­rec­tions employ­ees, was tabled by the House Consumer and Public Affairs Committee by a 3 – 2 vote fol­low­ing a Saturday hear­ing on the bill on February 3, 2018. The bill, intro­duced by Albuquerque Rep. Monica C. Youngblood, was the fifth and, accord­ing to news reports, like­ly the final attempt under Gov. Susana Martinez to bring back the death penal­ty in the state. Youngblood has spon­sored or co-spon­sored each of those bills. In October 2017, death-penal­ty pro­po­nents had attempt­ed to make the restora­tion of the death penal­ty an elec­tion issue, intro­duc­ing the bill dur­ing a spe­cial leg­isla­tive ses­sion that had been called to address the state’s bud­get cri­sis and hold­ing a pre-dawn hear­ing on the bill with no advance pub­lic notice on October 5. That bill passed on a par­ty-line vote in the House before dying in the Democratic-con­trolled State Senate. Then, in the November elec­tions, death-penal­ty sup­port­ers lost con­trol of the House. Media accounts report­ed that this time ​“a long line of oppo­nents wait­ed for their three min­utes to oppose the bill” dur­ing the com­mit­tee’s pub­lic hear­ing, while only four speak­ers — two of whom worked for the Governor — advo­cat­ed for the bill. Department of Public Safety Secretary Scott Weaver and Secretary of Corrections David Jablonski each argued that the death penal­ty was an impor­tant tool for law enforce­ment. Five reli­gious lead­ers, includ­ing a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the New Mexico Council of Catholic Bishops, spoke against the bill. Bennett Bauer, the state’s chief pub­lic defend­er, argued that the death penal­ty was not a deter­rent and would be applied unequal­ly through­out the state. The bil­l’s spon­sors assert­ed that the mur­ders it sub­ject­ed to cap­i­tal sanc­tions were lim­it­ed to the ​“worst of the worst” cas­es. However, the bill defined ​“chil­dren” as any vic­tim under age 18 — which would have been the broad­est def­i­n­i­tion of ​“child vic­tim” in any death-penal­ty statute in the United States. According to a DPIC review of recent FBI Uniform Crime Statistics, that def­i­n­i­tion would have encom­passed 8%-9% of all mur­ders. A DPIC study of FBI annu­al data on Law Enforcement Officers Killed & Assaulted over the past twen­ty-nine years also indi­cat­ed that hav­ing the death penal­ty did not make law enforce­ment offi­cers safer. Describing the study’s find­ings, DPIC exec­u­tive direc­tor Robert Dunham said, ​“When you look at the offi­cer-vic­tim rate, you see — as we did with mur­ders gen­er­al­ly — that offi­cers are dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly killed in states that have the death penal­ty, as com­pared to states that don’t.” The DPIC data showed that ​“Eight of the nine safest states for police offi­cers were states that either did not have the death penal­ty at any time in the study peri­od or … states that recent­ly abol­ished cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. By con­trast, death penal­ty states com­prised 22 of the 25 states with the high­est rates of offi­cers mur­dered in the line of duty.” New Mexico’s high rate of law enforce­ment deaths was the excep­tion. But the data showed the state’s sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er-than-aver­age rate of vio­lence against police offi­cers long pre­dat­ed its abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty in 2009.

(Andrew Oxford, Swift end for House bill to rein­state death penal­ty, Santa Fe New Mexican, February 3, 2018; Walter Rubel, Death penal­ty bill stopped in House com­mit­tee, Las Cruses Sun-News, February 3, 2018; Our view: Late night shenani­gans on the death penal­ty, The Santa Fe New Mexican, October 6, 2017.) See Recent Legislative Activity.

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