Before his retire­ment from the court, Judge Ronald Reagan had sen­tenced a defen­dant to death and kept his views on the death penal­ty to him­self. However, as Nebraska is con­sid­er­ing a bill to abol­ish cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, he spoke in favor of its repeal. ​“I’m a cit­i­zen here. I’d just as soon not have a death penal­ty,” Judge Reagan tes­ti­fied. ​“It just seems to me that peo­ple are rec­og­niz­ing that the death penal­ty is not an appro­pri­ate pun­ish­ment in a civ­i­lized soci­ety.” Calling cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment ​“state-sanc­tioned revenge,” Judge Reagan spoke of sen­tenc­ing a man to death by the elec­tric chair in 1984 despite his life­long oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty ​“on philo­soph­i­cal grounds,” because judges are ​“sup­posed to apply the law that is giv­en to us,” and ​“aren’t sup­posed to be polit­i­cal activists.” Reagan tes­ti­fied, ​“I always felt that I couldn’t say any­thing for 32 years,” and he believes oth­er judges share his view­point but are barred from express­ing or act­ing on their opin­ions while on the bench. 

Judge Reagan, who retired in 2005 as a Sarpy County dis­trict judge, said he saw no gen­er­al deter­rent val­ue to the death penal­ty and ​“It’s not going to low­er the mur­der rate.” He also point­ed out that he observed the death penal­ty applied unfair­ly. He said many mur­der cas­es that could result in cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment end in a plea bar­gain with the death sen­tence dropped. Judge Reagan shared that no one had asked him to tes­ti­fy at the hear­ing and he believed few peo­ple knew of his per­son­al views on the mat­ter before this tes­ti­mo­ny to lawmakers.

(P. Hammel, ​“Judge put exe­cu­tion views aside,” Omaha World-Herald, February 2, 2009). See New Voices.

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