Wyoming Governor ​“Very Seriously” Considering Death Penalty Moratorium

Calling cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment a ​“lux­u­ry” that the state can no longer afford, Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon (pic­tured) told leg­is­la­tors that he is ​“very seri­ous­ly” con­sid­er­ing impos­ing a mora­to­ri­um on the state’s rarely-used death penalty. 

The Casper Star-Tribune reports that the state is fac­ing a $1.5 bil­lion bud­get deficit from short­falls caused by the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic and declin­ing rev­enues in the state’s ener­gy sec­tor. Gordon told mem­bers of the state legislature’s Joint Appropriations Committee on July 13, 2020 that he was explor­ing poten­tial bud­get cuts to help address the deficit.“I’m look­ing very seri­ous­ly at a mora­to­ri­um on the death penal­ty,” he said. ​“It costs us around a mil­lion dol­lars every time that is brought up. These are just lux­u­ries — lux­u­ries, that we will no longer be able to afford.”

Wyoming death-penal­ty oppo­nents wel­comed the governor’s remarks. ​“We are encour­aged by Governor Gordon’s thought­ful com­ments on the death penal­ty today,” Kylie Taylor, coor­di­na­tor of Wyoming Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty, said in a state­ment. ​“Movement away from the death penal­ty has become a Western val­ue, with four west­ern states insti­tut­ing mora­to­ria in the last decade — two of which have since end­ed the death penal­ty out­right.” Taylor said that Gordon’s con­sid­er­a­tion of a mora­to­ri­um ​“is show­ing he wants to pri­or­i­tize eco­nom­ic recov­ery over a failed gov­ern­ment pro­gram that has cost Wyoming mil­lions of dol­lars with­out any real benefit.”

ACLU of Wyoming spokesper­son Sabrina King, called the death penal­ty ​“an expen­sive, inef­fec­tive and unjust gov­ern­ment pro­gram.” She said “[t]he mon­ey saved by repeal­ing the death penal­ty in Wyoming and not try­ing cap­i­tal cas­es would help solve the state’s bud­get short­fall this year and in years to come.” In a state­ment released in response to the governor’s action, the state ACLU said ​“Gov. Mark Gordon is right to con­sid­er a mora­to­ri­um on the death penal­ty. But the mora­to­ri­um should not be tem­po­rary. Legislators should repeal the death penal­ty dur­ing the 2021 session.”

A bipar­ti­san coali­tion of Wyoming leg­is­la­tors intro­duced a bill in January 2019 to abol­ish the state’s death penal­ty. The bill passed the House and a Senate com­mit­tee before fail­ing in a vote by the full Senate. 2020 was a bud­get ses­sion for the Wyoming leg­is­la­ture, in which non-bud­getary bills require a two-thirds vote before they can be intro­duced. An abo­li­tion bill fell three votes short of the required super­ma­jor­i­ty this year, but is expect­ed to be intro­duced again in 2021.

Wyoming has car­ried out just one exe­cu­tion since 1976 and has not imposed a new death sen­tence since 2004.