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Thread: Nebraska Capital Punishment News

  1. #201
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    The transparency bill is now on its way to the governor for approval.

    https://nebraskalegislature.gov/bill...cumentID=37092
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

  2. #202
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Nebraska governor vetoes death penalty transparency bill

    By Dean Welte
    KTIV News

    OMAHA, Neb. (AP) - Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts has vetoed a bill that would have prohibited prison officials from blocking the view of execution witnesses before the condemned inmate is declared dead, signaling that they're willing to repeat the much-criticized step in a future execution.

    The bill was introduced after prison officials closed the witness viewing curtain for 14 minutes during the August 2018 execution of Carey Dean Moore, which prevented members of the media from seeing the full process.

    Supporters of the bill said the move prevented the public from knowing whether something went wrong with the execution.

    https://ktiv.com/2020/08/18/nebraska...arency-bill-2/
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  3. #203
    Senior Member Frequent Poster Fact's Avatar
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    Even if they don't override the veto, it likely won't matter much. The Nebraska Supreme Court recently decided (correctly in my opinion based on the law) that lethal injection drug purchases are subject to the state's public records law.

  4. #204
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Neil's Avatar
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    Nebraska death sentences continue despite no execution drugs

    Three times in the past four years, Nebraska prosecutors have sought death sentences, and each time they have been successful. Within a couple months, two more people convicted of a grisly murder could also be sentenced to death.

    But as the state adds to its death row population, the lawyers, judges and prison officials who oversee Nebraska's system of capital punishment largely ignore the fact that the state has no lethal injection drugs and very likely won’t get any for years, if ever. Those sentenced to death have a better chance of dying of natural causes than being executed.

    While the nation remains divided over capital punishment, Nebraska stands out for its peculiar version of the institution: it's still wedded to the idea of executing prisoners, just not the practical part of doing it. The state is among a handful caught in a law vs. reality netherworld as legislatures and activists wrestle over how the issue will eventually play out. As the Rev. Stephen Griffith, a leading anti-death penalty activist, put it, “We’re being duplicitous, really. We say Nebraska has a death penalty when, functionally, we don’t.”

    Twenty seven states allow capital punishment, but many have struggled in recent years to obtain the drugs used to execute inmates because most manufacturers now refuse to openly supply them. While 12 other states responded to the hesitancy by keeping their suppliers secret, Nebraska's Supreme Court threw out its secrecy policy after the state used it to execute an inmate in 2018.

    Corrections director Scott Frakes told a legislative committee that unless Nebraska is allowed to hide supplier names, the state likely would never be able to obtain the necessary drugs.

    “Once we get done with the trial and sentencing, it’s kind of off our shoulders,” said Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine, who has sent four men to death row during his 14-year tenure, none of whom have been executed.

    “Certainly, it seems to be the case right now that the state doesn’t have the wherewithal to carry it out.”

    The stand-off over execution drugs reflects a longstanding ambivalence toward capital punishment in Nebraska. Even before the drug issue, the state didn't carry many executions, and legislators in 2015 voted to abolish the death penalty, in part because it costs the state an estimated $15 million annually to prosecute and offer special housing to death row inmates.

    But after Gov. Pete Ricketts helped pay for a petition drive to put the issue on the ballot, voters overwhelmingly reinstated the death penalty.

    Matt Maly, a conservative activist who opposes capital punishment on moral and fiscal grounds, said many Nebraskans still support capital punishment, but they’re not especially passionate about the issue. Given that, politicians are willing to keep it on the books but not actually carry out executions.

    “It’s not something you’re hearing about in coffee shops or grocery stores,” Maly said. “The legislature could have said, ‘Let’s do what it takes to make this happen,’ but they don’t have the will to do that.”

    Still, the end of executions doesn't mean an end to the death penalty process. Prosecutors keep seeking death sentences, and judges have condemned three more inmates since the capital punishment reinstatement vote in 2016.

    Nebraska’s death row now has 11 inmates after one died in early April of natural causes. Nationally, executions have resumed after the struggle over drug supplies but are nearing record lows, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a group that tracks executions. Seventeen inmates were put to death in 2020, down from a high of 98 in 1999.

    Texas and Georgia, both leading death penalty states, now have periodic executions. Tennessee has executed seven inmates in the last three years, including one in 2020. Several states are still working through legal challenges, including Oklahoma, which suspended executions after injection problems in two cases. A few states have given up, like Virginia, which dropped capital punishment in March.

    Robert Dunham, the Death Penalty Information Center's executive director, said many states seem to show “inertia” with the death penalty.

    “If you have a jurisdiction in which death sentences haven’t been imposed, people either forget how to do it or they sort of realize they don’t miss it and they don’t tend to push for it,” he said. “But once they do it and it becomes a part of the culture, they tend to do it again and again and again.”

    All of Nebraska’s current death-row inmates were convicted of either murdering multiple people or a child, and each case includes aggravating factors such as sexual assaults, cover-ups of other crimes or dismembering bodies.

    Lancaster County Sheriff Terry Wagner said that if drugs are a problem, lawmakers should consider other execution methods, such as firing squads.

    “There are some crimes that are so heinous, so evil, that they deserve the death penalty,” Wagner said.

    Kleine, the Douglas County attorney, said he’ll continue to pursue death sentences out of respect for the voters who chose to keep capital punishment.

    “It’s not an easy decision to seek the death penalty, but right now it’s a law on the books, and if we feel the circumstances are appropriate, that’s what we’ll do,” he said.

    http://www.elpasoinc.com/news/ap_wir...aea31f309.html
    Last edited by Moh; 05-10-2021 at 02:19 AM. Reason: Spacing

  5. #205
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Neil's Avatar
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    Any ideas how Nebraska can execute again? Certainly the legislature there seems very hostile to it. Ricketts spent all that money to reinstate it for the politicians there not to come up with anything to execute anyone. The biggest push was with Moores execution. Now it’s quiet on their end and the politicians don’t care to have it continue.

  6. #206
    Senior Member CnCP Addict johncocacola's Avatar
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    Nebraska is unique in the form of having a unicameral legislature. It’s easier for things to happen on a whim, things that aren’t necessarily populist per se.

  7. #207
    Moderator Ryan's Avatar
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    John Lotter will become the next person executed in the State of Nebraska.
    "How do you get drunk on death row?" - Werner Herzog

    "When we get fruit, we get the juice and water. I ferment for a week! It tastes like chalk, it's nasty" - Blaine Keith Milam #999558 Texas Death Row

  8. #208
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Aubrey Trial's lawsuit has confirmed that the state still HASN'T PURCHASED or POSSESSED ANY LETHAL INJECTION DRUGS for YEARS at this point.

    https://journalstar.com/news/local/c...024686984.html

    Another state where the "Death Penalty" is just a grift for suits.
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

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