Thread: Nebraska Abolishes Death Penalty

Nebraska Abolishes Death Penalty

By JULIE BOSMAN MAY 27, 2015


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 staunch supporter of capital punishment who had lobbied vigorously against banning it.

By a 30 to 19 vote that cut across party lines, the Legislature overrode the governor’s veto on 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 months long 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 Mr. Ricketts’s desk.

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Mr. 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,” Mr. 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, Neb., 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. And he echoed the governor’s statement that the lawmakers who supported the death penalty repeal bill were out of touch with a widely conservative public.

“I don’t think the politicians are in line with the everyday people,” Mr. Ambrosias said on 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.”

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,” says Don Johnson, a retired commercial fisherman from Alaska now living in Ceresco. “I don’t think they think they think about the death penalty when they kill somebody or somebody gets killed. I don’t think it’s a preventative measure at all.”

Mr. Johnson, who considers himself an evangelical Protestant, said he sees the issue less as a religious belief than a strictly personal one. Other members of his church are in favor of the death penalty, he says, though he admits he cannot quite reconcile the punishment with Christianity.

“If you really follow Jesus’s teachings,” he said, “thou shall not kill, you know.”

Catholic bishops in Nebraska issued a statement on Tuesday criticizing Mr. Ricketts’s veto. “We remain convinced that the death penalty does not deter crime, nor does it make Nebraska safer or promote the common good in our state,” they said.

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. No conservative state has banned the death penalty since North Dakota in 1973.

Across the country, efforts to execute criminals on death row have stalled in the face of growing backlash against the death penalty and logistical difficulties with lethal injections. Many states have had difficulty obtaining lethal injection drugs, as European manufacturers, citing moral and ethical objections, have refused to sell them to prisons in the United States. Texas, which executes more inmates than any other state, has only enough drugs to carry out one more lethal injection.

Searching for alternatives in the face of drug shortages, some states have taken other measures. In March, the Utah governor signed a law allowing firing squads to be used for executions, and Arkansas, Wyoming and Idaho have considered replacing lethal injection with firing squads. In Tennessee, which has been unable to obtain lethal injection drugs, lawmakers last year reinstated the use of the electric chair. Inmates quickly challenged the constitutionality of the electric chair, and a trial in the Tennessee Supreme Court over its use will begin in July.

Mr. Ricketts has tried to ward off concerns about the availability of drugs by announcing this month that he had made arrangements with a pharmaceutical company to obtain the necessary drugs for lethal injections. Some lawmakers have said that the governor had not actually obtained the drugs, asserting that he was trying to sway legislators to uphold his veto. Those lawmakers have also raised questions about whether those drugs would be legal to use, if the governor had obtained them.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/28/us...h-penalty.html

Governor says Nebraska will move forward with 10 executions


Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts addresses the Legislature in Lincoln, Neb., as the legislature moved to abolish the death penalty.

(Nati Harnik / Associated Press)


By ASSOCIATED PRESS

​Governor pushes for executions despite Legislature's repeal


Nebraska Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts says lawmakers' repeal of the death penalty won't stop his administration from proceeding with executions of 10 people already sentenced to death.

Ricketts said Friday that he doesn't plan to cancel a shipment of lethal injection drugs that the state bought earlier this month.

The GOP-controlled Legislature this week approved a law repealing the death penalty over the governor's veto. The law doesn't go into effect for three months.

Atty. Gen. Doug Peterson has raised questions about whether it unconstitutionally changes the sentences of current death row inmates to life in prison.

Sen. Ernie Chambers of Omaha, the law's lead sponsor, has said it's constitutional.

Chambers said the Legislature can't change a prisoner's sentence, but his law eliminates the state's authority to carry out executions.

http://www.latimes.com/nation/nation...529-story.html

Justice denied? Nebraska murderer on death row for 30 years dies before execution

Published May 26, 2015 FoxNews.com

This undated photo provided by the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services shows Michael Ryan. (AP)

A Nebraska cult leader who spent 30 years on death row appealing his sentence for the torture and murder of one follower and the beating death of a five-year-old boy died of cancer just days after state lawmakers voted to repeal capital punishment through a bill the governor has vowed to veto.

Michael Ryan was convicted in 1985 of torturing and killing 26-year-old James Thimm at a southeast Nebraska farm and beating to death Luke Stice, the 5-year-old son of a cult member.

The 66-year-old Ryan, who led the neo-Nazi cult, sat for 30 years on death row at the Tecumseh State Correctional Institutional in southeast Nebraska before dying Sunday from terminal brain cancer, though official autopsy results have not been released.

To staunch supporters of Nebraska's death penalty, like Republican state Sen. Bill Kintner, Ryan's fate represents a grave injustice.

"That was certainly justice delayed, which is justice denied," Kintner said of Ryan, whose 30 years behind bars in a maximum security prison amounted to double the time -- on average -- most death row inmates wait before execution. The average length of time between death sentence and execution is 15 and a half years, according to a 2013 release by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Thimm's sister, meanwhile, was quoted in 2009 as saying she opposed the death penalty even for her brother's killers, reportedly arguing no one has the right to decide who should live or die.

Ryan's case underscores the many complexities of the capital punishment debate -- from moral arguments over the taking of a life to legal ones claiming the system is unjust because the majority of those on death row are poor and minority.

There are also critics of capital punishment who point solely to economics, like the staggering cost to taxpayers in many states, while others argue death -- as opposed to life in prison -- is too lenient a punishment.

Kintner said he believes there is no punishment more fitting than death for those he calls "the worst of the worst" -- murderers like Ryan, he said, who skinned Thimm alive and helped other men shoot off the victim's fingers before later killing him.

Kintner claims 70 percent of Nebraskans support capital punishment and argues that it's a useful tool for law enforcement when persuading criminals to divulge information or plead guilty and, in effect, avoid costly trials.

"Once they’re executed, it also takes away the danger for the guards and other people at the correctional facility," Kintner told FoxNews.com, citing a deadly riot at Tecumseh last month, during which two inmates serving time for child sexual assault were tortured and killed by other inmates.

Kinter's position, however, is not shared by other lawmakers in the Nebraska legislature who voted last week to abolish the death penalty -- a move that surprised many political observers because 18 Republicans joined 13 Democrats and one independent to push the repeal through in a conservative state. Legislative Bill 268, which passed 32-15, replaces lethal injection with a maximum punishment of life in prison.

Sen. Ernie Chambers, an Independent from Omaha who spearheaded the bill, said he had "total and utter confidence that we will override the governor’s veto," according to the Omaha World-Herald.

"We got the state out of the killing business today," he told the newspaper.

Citing decades-long wait times due to the appeals process, Republican state Sen. Colby Coash said he opposes it.

"Its something that's been on the books. It's not being implemented. It is costing our state money," Coash told Robin Young of Here & Now. "So we're approaching this from a good-government perspective and saying, 'Look, this is a program that's not working.

We should just get rid of it.'"

While Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts vowed to veto the measure, lawmakers are preparing to override him. Kintner said he predicts the issue will go to ballot if there are not enough votes to uphold the veto expected this week.

Ryan had been on death row since Sept. 12, 1985. Over three days, Thimm was beaten, sexually abused, shot, stomped and partially skinned while still alive. His fingertips had been shot off on one hand.

The Ryans and about 20 cult members lived on the farm. The group hated Jews and stored weapons in preparation for a final battle between good and evil, authorities have said. Ryan told his followers that he heard the voice of God and that Thimm had angered God.

Ryan's son, Dennis Ryan, and cult member Timothy Haverkamp were sentenced to life in prison for second-degree murder in Thimm's death. Authorities said Dennis Ryan delivered the gunshot that killed Thimm after days of torture.

The younger Ryan was later released from prison after winning a new trial and being convicted of the lesser charge of manslaughter.

Haverkamp was released from his prison in 2009 after serving 23 years of a 10-years-to-life sentence.

Nebraska has only carried out four executions since 1973, partly because of repeated legal challenges. Ryan's case came up repeatedly as the state debated its death penalty and method of execution.

Michael Ryan was sentenced to die in 1986. The state Supreme Court rejected his first appeal in 1989 and his second appeal in 1995. When he was sentenced, Nebraska's sole means of execution was the electric chair. But after the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that death via electrocution was cruel and unusual punishment, the Legislature changed Nebraska's method of execution to lethal injection in 2009.

In 2012 Ryan challenged how Nebraska obtained one of three drugs that would have been used to execute him. A lower court denied Ryan's request without holding a hearing, and in April last year the state Supreme Court rejected his appeal.

But Nebraska had no means to execute Ryan because one of three drugs needed for lethal injection expired in 2013.

On May 14, Ricketts announced that state officials had obtained all three drugs required for executions. But less than a week later, the Legislature gave final approval to a bill abolishing Nebraska's death penalty. The governor has said he intends to veto the bill on Tuesday and has been searching to switch enough votes to sustain his veto.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/05/26...ore-execution/