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Why Oppose the Death Penalty?
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NEBRASKA: IT’S TIME TO RE-EVALUATE THE DEATH PENALTY!
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Nebraska has a long history of moving away from the death penalty. In 1979, the Nebraska Legislature was the first in the country to pass a bill to end the death penalty. Again in 1999, Nebraska was the first state to pass a bill placing a moratorium on executions. Both of these attempts to re-evaluate our state’s death penalty were met by a governor’s veto. These efforts to address the application and fairness of Nebraska’s death penalty were a good idea in the 1970s, the 1990s, and are an even better idea today.
Whether one supports, opposes, or is uncertain about the use of the death penalty, serious questions remain about the system's fairness, cost, and effectiveness.
In 2008, the Nebraska Supreme Court declared our only method of execution, the electric chair, unconstitutional. A year later, the Legislature changed the state's method of execution from the electric chair to lethal injection over the objections of legal authorities, medical experts, judges, law enforcement officers, and the families of those who have lost loved ones to murder. The hastily drafted and adopted measure to implement lethal injection remains open to legal challenges that will result in numerous appeals, at great cost to taxpayers.
Last year, as Nebraska began to face huge budget deficits, the Legislature refused to study the cost Nebraska's death penalty system. However, we can easily predict the outcome of such a study--more than a dozen states have found that having the death penalty is up to 10 times more expensive than replacing it with a sentence of life without parole. Some of the newest and strongest opponents of executions include police officers, prosecutors, and judges, who remain philosophically in favor of capital punishment but see it as a waste of precious resources that could be used toward proven public safety programs. One does not need to be opposed to the death penalty to see that there are far better ways to spend our increasingly limited resources.
Nebraska tried to set two execution dates in the last year, which would have marked the first execution held in Nebraska in more than 13 years. Legal wranglings have postponed both of those dates, and appeals continue over the method of execution and the State's attempts to procure lethal drugs. We must ask why the state is pursuing this faulty course despite so many unanswered questions.
Why the rush to test a new method of execution? Why spend hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars seeking an execution when the state is in the throes of a budget crisis, compelled to slash funding for education, health care, and public safety? Why continue this broken, bloated government program?
We, the undersigned, call on the State of Nebraska to re-evaluate its use of the death penalty. If not now, when, and at what cost to our state’s future?
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Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Change needs to be addressed
We revisit this issue periodically. And while our opinion may not be published annually, it is published regularly and generally during the time the Nebraska Legislature is in session.
That is because the topic is the death penalty and it becomes news when someone in the legislature addresses capital punishment in any form.
In recent years the issue has been not whether the state should execute, but how the state executes. In 2008, the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled the electric chair unconstitutional and in 2009, the electric chair was abandoned in favor of lethal injections. Nebraska was the last state to terminate the chair.
Last week, we reported that Miriam Kelle has once again proposed that Nebraska change the option of execution to life in prison without parole. Her reasoning is certainly compelling.
Kelle's brother, James Thimm, was murdered nearly 27 years ago by Michael Ryan, one of 11 men now on Nebraska's death row.
She does not want to see her brother's killer killed by the state. Her reasoning is based on her Mennonite beliefs, and while certainly challenged by her experience, her belief in God is stronger than a need for vengeance.
We have consistently opposed the death penalty. There are arguments, as there are with every issue, that demand thought and certainly disagreement does not preclude understanding.
There are two main reasons for our opinion.
The first is that juries and the legal system can be wrong. There are a number of stories where modern forensics has exonerated innocent men and women. Taking years of freedom from the innocent is disturbing enough. However, executing an innocent would be devastating.
The second reason is simply consistent with our belief in life. Executing means we, as a society making laws, believes that killing can be justified. We find that inconsistent.
Having the ability to forgive like Kelle may be rare. But we applaud her efforts and once again, we feel that abolishing the death penalty is the policy that mirrors the values of most Nebraskans.
