Wyoming Senate Committee Passes Bill to Repeal State’s Death Penalty

A Wyoming state sen­ate com­mit­tee has advanced to the full Senate a bill to repeal the state’s death penalty. 

After tak­ing tes­ti­mo­ny from wit­ness­es includ­ing the state pub­lic defender’s office, fam­i­ly mem­bers of mur­der vic­tims, a death-row exoneree, anti-death-penal­ty activists, reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions, and a nation­al expert on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, the all-Republican Senate Revenue Committee vot­ed 4 – 1 on March 4, 2021 to pass Senate File 150. The vote marked the sec­ond time in three years that a sen­ate com­mit­tee had approved a bill to abol­ish the death penal­ty. In 2019, a bill spon­sored by House Majority Whip Jared Olsen (R ­– Cheyenne), passed the house and was report­ed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee with a 4 – 0 vote before being defeat­ed in an 18 – 12 Senate vote.

SF 150’s spon­sor, Sen. Brian Boner (R – Douglas, pic­tured) expressed con­cerns about the cost of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and the risk of exe­cut­ing the inno­cent. Citing a fis­cal note by the state Legislative Service Office, Boner told the com­mit­tee that main­tain­ing the capa­bil­i­ty to try death penal­ty cas­es, even with­out an active cap­i­tal tri­al or appeal, costs Wyoming in excess of $750,000 per year. A cap­i­tal case that actu­al­ly goes to tri­al, State Public Defender Diane Lozano tes­ti­fied, costs state tax­pay­ers between $1 mil­lion and $2 mil­lion. $1,236,750 has already been appro­pri­at­ed for pre­tri­al pro­ceed­ings in the cap­i­tal resen­tenc­ing of Dale Wayne Eaton, whose death sen­tence was over­turned in 2014, Lozano said.

The most emo­tion­al tes­ti­mo­ny of the hear­ing came from Christal Martin, whose moth­er and hus­band were mur­dered in sep­a­rate inci­dents more than twen­ty years apart. ​“I knew the loss of two fam­i­ly mem­bers through vio­lent crime,” said Martin, describ­ing how the emo­tion­al trau­ma is exac­er­bat­ed by years of court pro­ceed­ings that reopen emo­tion­al wounds and inter­fere with heal­ing. Having expe­ri­enced the loss of a par­ent as a child, she cau­tioned the com­mit­tee against sub­ject­ing the fam­i­lies of mur­der vic­tims and cap­i­tal defen­dants to the same emo­tion­al pain. “[I]n no way would I ever fight for some­body to go and be put to death by my hands, through the judi­cial sys­tem, and cause a chain reac­tion of trau­ma,” she said.

Death-row exoneree Ray Krone, a co-founder of the orga­ni­za­tion Witness to Innocence, described his expe­ri­ence as an hon­or­ably dis­charged air force vet­er­an being wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed and con­demned to die by the state of Arizona. ​“Everybody’s worst fear about cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is that inno­cent peo­ple will be wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed and exe­cut­ed,” Death Penalty Information Center Executive Director Robert Dunham told the com­mit­tee. ​“But it is no longer debat­able that inno­cent peo­ple can and do get sen­tenced to death and some have been exe­cut­ed,” he said. ​“Since 1973, at least 185 men and women who were wrong­ly con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death have been exon­er­at­ed,” Dunham tes­ti­fied. ​“That is one exon­er­a­tion for every 8.3 exe­cu­tions — an aston­ish­ing fail­ure rate,” he said.

Kylie Taylor, coor­di­na­tor for the Wyoming chap­ter of Conservatives Concerned about the Death Penalty (CCADP), told the com­mit­tee that cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment was offen­sive to con­ser­v­a­tive val­ues. After the vote, the Wyoming CCADP released a state­ment in which Taylor said, ​“I am thrilled that Senate File 150 has made it out of com­mit­tee and is head­ing to the Senate floor.… This shows there is a real effort to pri­or­i­tize fis­cal respon­si­bil­i­ty, the sanc­ti­ty of human life, and small gov­ern­ment in Wyoming. We are more than ready for Wyoming to become the 24^th state to repeal the death penalty!”

The ACLU of Wyoming also issued a state­ment fol­low­ing the vote. ​“Repealing the death penal­ty,” the orga­ni­za­tion said, ​“will help elim­i­nate racial and juris­dic­tion­al bias, reduce unnec­es­sary waste of tax dol­lars and elim­i­nate the risk of exe­cut­ing inno­cent peo­ple.” Sabrina King, who tes­ti­fied on behalf of Wyoming ACLU at the hear­ing, said after­wards that sup­port for the repeal efforts was ​“grow­ing every day” among Wyoming res­i­dents. ​“With the Revenue Committee advanc­ing Senate File 150,” she said, ​“we’re con­fi­dent that sup­port will con­tin­ue to grow among leg­is­la­tors, too.”

Twenty-two U.S. states have abol­ished the death penal­ty, and a bill to end Virginia’s death penal­ty has passed the leg­is­la­ture and is await­ing Governor Ralph Northam’s sig­na­ture. Twelve death-penal­ty states, includ­ing Wyoming, have not exe­cut­ed any­one in more than a decade. Wyoming has exe­cut­ed only one per­son since cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment resumed in the United States in the 1970s and has not exe­cut­ed any­one since 1992. No one is cur­rent­ly on the state’s death row.

In July 2020, with the state fac­ing a $1.5 bil­lion bud­get deficit from short­falls caused by the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic and declin­ing rev­enues in the state’s ener­gy sec­tor, Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon told leg­is­la­tors that he was ​“very seri­ous­ly” con­sid­er­ing impos­ing a mora­to­ri­um on the use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The death penal­ty ​“costs us around a mil­lion dol­lars every time” it is pur­sued, Gordon said. ​“These are just lux­u­ries — lux­u­ries, that we will no longer be able to afford.”