Nebraska abolishes the dealth penalty
Conservative state’s legislature cuts across party lines to defy Republican governor, override veto
Nebraska is the first conservative state in more than 40 years to do so.
LINCOLN, Neb. — Nebraska on Wednesday became the first conservative state in more than 40 years to abolish the death penalty, with lawmakers defying their Republican governor, Pete Ricketts, a supporter of capital punishment who had lobbied against banning it.
By a 30-19 vote that cut across party lines, the Legislature overrode the governor’s veto Tuesday of a bill repealing the state’s death penalty law. The measure garnered just enough votes to overcome the veto.
The vote at the state Capitol here capped a monthslong battle that pitted most lawmakers in the unicameral Legislature against the governor, many law enforcement officials and some family members of murder victims whose killers are on death row. The Legislature approved the repeal bill three times this year, each time by a veto-proof majority, before sending it to Ricketts’ desk. Fought against repeal
Ricketts fought against the repeal bill by appearing repeatedly in television interviews and urging Nebraskans to pressure their senators to oppose it. On Tuesday, he signed a veto in front of reporters assembled at the Capitol and talked about a gruesome bank robbery in the city of Norfolk in 2002, in which five people were shot to death, as a compelling reason that Nebraska should hold on to capital punishment. Two family members of a woman who was shot during the robbery stood at the governor’s side.
“It’s important to protect the safety of the public,” Ricketts said, adding that in his view, there was strong public support in Nebraska for keeping the death penalty. “The overwhelming number of constituents that I talk to want to retain the death penalty,” he said.
Though it formally considers itself nonpartisan, the Nebraska Legislature is dominated by Republicans. Republican legislators who have voted in favor of abolition said they believed the death penalty was inefficient, expensive and out of place with their party’s values. Other lawmakers cited religious or moral reasons for their support of the death penalty ban. Eighteen states and Washington, D.C., have banned the death penalty.
Some Nebraskans said in interviews this week that they agreed with the governor. In downtown Ceresco, about 18 miles north of Lincoln, Wayne Ambrosias, owner of the Sweet Pea Market, said he did not want his tax dollars used to pay for murderers to stay in prison for their entire lives.
“I don’t think the politicians are in line with the everyday people,” Ambrosias said Wednesday just before the vote. “I think it’s more of a political move. I don’t think the people are telling them that’s what they want.” ‘Crime of passion’
But others said they saw the issue differently, rejecting the argument that the death penalty was necessary to deter crime.
“A lot of times murder is a crime of passion,” said Don Johnson, a retired commercial fisherman from Alaska now living in Ceresco. “I don’t think they think about the death penalty when they kill somebody or somebody gets killed. I don’t think it’s a preventive measure at all.”
Johnson, who considers himself an evangelical Protestant, said he sees the issue less as a religious belief than a strictly personal one. He admits he cannot quite reconcile the punishment with Christianity.
“If you really follow Jesus’ teachings,” he said, “thou shall not kill, you know.”
The bill replaces capital punishment with life imprisonment.
Since 2007, six states have abolished the death penalty: Maryland, Connecticut, Illinois, New Mexico and New Jersey.