All eyes on Nebraska Tuesday
Last month Nebraska’s Supreme Court removed the state’s only mean to conduct executions, holding the electric chair violated basic norms of decency. A de facto moratorium ensued amidst political opposition to reviving executions. Tuesday an effort to break the status quo will occur with an attempt to abolish the death penalty.
Lawmakers on Tuesday will begin debating Legislative Bill 1063, which would abolish the death penalty and replace it with a sentence of life in prison without parole.
It will be the third time in a little more than a year that the Legislature has debated capital punishment.
In 2007, lawmakers fell one vote short of advancing, from first-round debate, a bill to repeal the death penalty. Death penalty opponents then regrouped and proposed to sharply restrict death sentences. That fell two votes short of advancing.
The 2007 debate came before the State Supreme Court’s decision to ban the electric chair, before the U.S. Supreme Court heard a case challenging the constitutionality of lethal injection, and before New Jersey became the first state in more than 40 years to abolish capital punishment.
State Sen. Ernie Chambers of Omaha, long the Legislature’s leading opponent of the death penalty, already has declared a victory of sorts.
We’re looking for a source on the ground there for the debate. I’ve looked at several of the blogs there & feel somewhat disappointed. Feel free to tip us off to a good source as I think I have just posted everything I know about the death penalty debate, and recent developments, in Nebraska.
