By JoAnne Young
Lincoln Journal Star
LINCOLN, Neb. — Senators are expected to take up a debate today on repealing the death penalty, but without the fanfare that has accompanied other recent debates.
The bill (LB306), introduced by Omaha Sen. Brenda Council, would change the penalty for a Class 1 felony to life without the possibility of parole.
The hearing on the bill was held during last year’s session. It was sent out of the Judiciary Committee on a 6-1 vote, with Omaha Sen. Scott Lautenbaugh voting against advancing the bill and Sen. Mark Christensen of Imperial abstaining from voting.
The Legislature passed a bill last session by a 34-12 vote establishing lethal injection as the state’s means of carrying out the death penalty.
Council said Tuesday there are important issues concerning the death penalty that weren’t fully discussed last year during the lethal injection debate. That included the issue of the deterrent effect of the death penalty.
Studies show it does not deter people from killing, she said. And police chiefs put it at the bottom of the list of ways to reduce violent crime.
Senators have never received reliable costs of carrying out the death penalty in Nebraska, Council said, even though other states have been able to get that information.
“We don’t really know the efficacy of maintaining the death penalty,” she said.
Kansas reviewed death penalty expenses and concluded capital cases were 70 percent more expensive than non-death penalty cases, for example. The study estimated the median cost through execution at $1.26 million.
The Nebraska Department of Corrections has said the financial impact is not determinable, and the attorney general’s office had estimated no fiscal impact in switching to lethal injection.
Jill Francke, statewide coordinator of Nebraskans Against the Death Penalty, said a few death penalty opponents will show up for debate today. They had been unsure until Tuesday when the debate would actually take place, she said.
It has been discouraging for opponents to see the state press forward with a new method after the electric chair was declared unconstitutional two years ago.
With lethal injection, she said, the state is digging itself into a trench of costly litigation and appeals that will go on for decades.
The state is facing an economic crisis and can’t afford the cost of carrying out death sentences, she said.
A recent report by National Public Radio showed prosecutors sought the death penalty less often in 2009, and judges and juries handed down fewer death sentences.
The state Department of Corrections has developed a lethal injection protocol. Attorney General Jon Bruning said last May an execution would not be carried out for at least a year.
Eleven men sit on Nebraska’s death row. A letter last year from the attorney general’s office said the state likely would seek an execution date for Raymond Mata Jr., convicted in the 1999 murder of a Scottsbluff toddler, after a lethal injection protocol was written.
Copyright 2010 Lincoln Journal Star