Death penalty abolition discussed

The Judiciary Committee heard testimony March 13 on a bill that would repeal Nebraska’s death penalty.

LB543, introduced by Omaha Sen. Ernie Chambers, would replace death penalty provisions with the sentence of life without the possibility of parole. The provisions of the bill would apply retroactively to inmates currently serving capital punishment sentences. It was the 37th time that Chambers has introduced such legislation.

The bill also would allow the court to require payment to be made to a victim’s estate for any pain and suffering to the victim caused by the offense.

Chambers said the death penalty is arbitrarily administered and constitutes a legal means of torture. In addition to negatively influencing morality, the death penalty also has exerted a degrading influence on the state’s highest legal office, he said, referring to Nebraska’s 2011 illegal purchase of sodium thiopental—a drug used for carrying out lethal injections.

The bill would eliminate the corrupt and unethical behaviors associated with death penalty sentences, Chambers said.

Representing the Nebraska Criminal Defense Attorneys Association, Jerry Soucie testified in support of the bill, saying that evidence shows a racial disparity among inmates who are sentenced to death. There is an incredibly disparate application of the death penalty toward Hispanics and African-Americans in the state, he said.

Laurel Johnson, member of the Nebraska Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers, also supported the bill. The government sends the wrong message to its citizens when it inconsistently punishes people by death, she said.

“It cannot be said in good faith that the death penalty is serving justice when taking into account the racial disparities that exist,” she said. “A cycle of killing to show that killing is wrong makes no progress in our justice system.”

Curtis McCarty, a former Oklahoma death row inmate, testified in support of the bill, and said he spent 22 years in prison for a murder charge that later was dismissed when the crime scene’s DNA results were tested and did not match his.

Humans inherently make errors, McCarty said, yet society expects judges and law enforcement officers to be perfect. Such expectations have placed an unfair burden on them to determine whether or not a person should be sentenced to death, he said.

Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine testified in opposition to the bill. Citing two heinous murders involving children and torture, he said some crimes are so extreme that the death penalty is the only appropriate response.

“In certain unique circumstances we need to have this ultimate punishment,” he said.

Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, offered neutral testimony on the bill, saying the death penalty costs about $3 million per sentence while life imprisonment without the possibility of parole costs about $1.1 million per sentence.

Every step involved in a capital punishment case is more expensive than a typical trial, he said, including trial preparation, the sentencing process, multiple appeals and the higher cost of death row incarceration. The death penalty only saves the state money once an execution has occurred, Dieter said, and of Nebraska’s 35 death penalty sentences, only three have been carried out.

The committee took no immediate action on the bill.