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Your guide to the Nebraska death penalty debate

Nebraska Unicameral Chamber

The Nebraska Legislature has voted overwhelmingly – 30-13! – to repeal the death penalty. So why aren’t we celebrating yet?

While the support for repeal in Nebraska is thrilling, the process is rather long and complicated, and there is still much work to be done. We’ve put together this (fairly wonky) primer to help you follow along.

Most importantly, Nebraskans still have time to contact their Senators. Do you live in Nebraska or know someone who does? Visit and/or pass on this link to take action: https://ejusa.org/act/NE

Background

You may remember from your middle school civics class that Nebraska has a Unicameral system – unique in the United States. That means that, unlike every other state and the federal government, there is only one chamber, made up of 49 lawmakers (called Senators).

Also unlike any other state legislature, Nebraska lawmakers are elected into non-partisan positions. While they may be members of a political party, they are not elected with that affiliation, nor do they caucus with other members of their party.

What’s happened so far in the death penalty debate?

Back in March, the Unicameral’s Judiciary Committee held a hearing on Legislative Bill 268 (LB268). Days later, they voted unanimously to advance the bill to General File with an amendment. In other words, they approved the bill to move on to a full debate on the floor of the Legislature with agreement on one set of changes.

On April 16, LB 268 came up for General File – the first round of debate in front of the full Legislature, where a bill can be amended, returned to committee, indefinitely postponed or advanced. After several hours of debate, including consideration of several additional amendments, Senators voted 30-13 to advance the bill to the next phase, including the amendment recommended by the Judiciary Committee.

After the bill passed General File, it made a stop through Enrollment and Review (E&R). This is an administrative stop where legislative staff adds any amendments the Legislature approved, makes adjustments to the format, and reprints the bill in its updated form for the next step.

After E&R, the bill was scheduled for Select File – the second round of debate – on May 15. During Select File, Senators debated for just over four hours, mostly on an amendment that would have replaced the bill with one that would have put the death penalty on the ballot for a vote by Nebraska citizens. The lengthy debate was ultimately deemed a filibuster, so it required a cloture vote in order for debate to cease and a vote to take place. A cloture vote requires 33 votes, and 34 supported cloture on death penalty repeal. After the amendment failed, the repeal bill passed by a vote of 30-16.

After a bill passes Select File, it makes another stop through E&R for any changes (if needed) and gets reprinted for Final Reading.

Final Reading is the last vote the Legislature takes before a bill gets sent to the Governor. Senators are no longer permitted to offer amendments, but motions to send the bill back (to E&R, Select File, or a standing committee) or to delay are allowed. Such motions can be filibustered.

Final reading on LB 268 too place on May 20. Senators debated for just over two hours on a Bracket Motion to delay the bill until 2016. The debate was deemed a filibuster, so it required a cloture vote in order for debate to cease and a vote to take place. After 34 Senators supported cloture, the Bracket Motion failed 14-31. When a final vote was taken on the bill to repeal the death penalty, it passed 32-15.

After a bill passed Final Reading, it went to the Governor’s desk. He had five days (excluding Sundays) to veto, sign, or do nothing and let the bill become law. In a press conference on Tuesday, May 26, Governor Ricketts vetoed LB268, sending it back to the legislature.

The Legislature has five legislative days to override a veto. The override is a Motion on the floor, so members are allowed to debate the Motion according to the rules, but no additional motions or amendments are entertained on the bill. The Override Motion requires 30 votes to pass.

On May 27, after more than 3 hours of debate, the Nebraska legislature voted to override the Governor’s veto by a vote of 30-19.

Still want to know more? You’re a bigger geek than we are! You can check out the Nebraska Legislature’s primer on Lawmaking in Nebraska, their Glossary of terms, or even read the entire Rule Book [pdf].

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Repeal moves forward in Nebraska

We expected debate to go on much longer, but the writing was on the wall.

All eyes are on Nebraska, but the fight isn’t over.

This vote is Round One. There is another round of debate and two more votes that we have to win before the bill goes to the Governor’s desk. And if the Governor vetoes the bill as he’s promised, we need to hold on to all 30 of those votes to override it. We need to keep up the pressure.

Show everyone in Nebraska that we are standing with them as they try to become the next state to repeal the death penalty. Share this graphic on Facebook now.

All Eyes On Nebraska!

 

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You can also Tweet about the vote to help spread the word. Use #NERepeal and retweet some of our coverage at @EJUSA.

Momentum is on our side. We’re working hard on the ground, and you can help shine the spotlight on Nebraska to back us up.

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Conservatives rally for death penalty repeal in Nebraska

by Sarah Craft, EJUSA, and Sarah Barrett, Nebraskans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (NADP)

In a press conference at the Capitol this morning, members of Nebraska Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty (NE-CCATDP) called on lawmakers to support repeal. Seven state senators along with other Nebraska conservatives shared how the death penalty conflicts with their conservative values and needs to end.

“As conservatives, we are committed to fiscal responsibility, limited government, and valuing life, and the death penalty goes against every one of them,” said Sen. Colby Coash of Lincoln, one of the leaders of the group.

The Scottsbluff Star Herald took notice, editorializing in favor of repeal and saying “conservative Republicans are questioning the political sense of clinging to a toothless, costly policy that experts say has little effect on deterring crime.” And the Omaha World Herald noticed that the death penalty “no longer falls solely in the realm of liberal politics.”

“Nebraska’s conservative lawmakers are in good company,” said Matt Maly, state coordinator of NE-CCATDP. “Across the country conservative values have been a driving force to end the death penalty.” In addition to Nebraska, GOP lawmakers in Kansas, Kentucky, Wyoming, Montana, and Missouri sponsored bills in 2015 to repeal the death penalty.

“The death penalty is a costly government program that we don’t use and that does nothing to make us safer,” said Bryan Baumgart, former chairman of the Douglas County Republican Party. Baumgart was one of 23 prominent conservatives who signed an open letter – presented at the press conference – in support of repeal. “It’s inefficient and ineffective, which is why many conservatives want it repealed.”

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Pope gives unequivocal message: death penalty is unacceptable

2014 Pastoral Visit of Pope Francis to Korea

In one of his strongest statements against the death penalty to date, Pope Francis said that capital punishment “is inadmissible, no matter how serious the crime committed.” The Pope’s comments were submitted in a forceful call to the International Commission against the Death Penalty in Madrid.

The Pope added that the death penalty “contradicts God’s plan for man and society” and said, “Justice can never be accomplished by killing a human being.”

He acknowledged society’s need to protect itself but said that in the modern era, that does not apply to the death penalty. “When the death penalty is applied, it is not for a current act of aggression, but rather for an act committed in the past. It is also applied to persons whose current ability to cause harm is not current, as it has been neutralized – they are already deprived of their liberty.”

In a reference to the dispute over lethal injection procedures in the United States, the Pontiff went on to say that there is, in fact, no method of execution that would make the death penalty appropriate. “There is no humane way of killing another person,” Francis emphasized.

The Pope’s letter comes just over a week after his representative to the United Nations in Geneva endorsed international efforts to end executions.

Just before the Pope’s letter was revealed, all three Catholic Bishops in Nebraska came together to express their support for efforts to end the death penalty there. And in Kansas, the Bishop joined several other religious leaders in January to call on lawmakers there to end the death penalty.

Earlier in March, four national Catholic publications called for an end to the death penalty in the United States. The National Catholic Reporter; America; Our Sunday Visitor; and the National Catholic Register — representing a broad ideological spectrum — published an joint editorial urging “the readers of our diverse publications and the whole U.S. Catholic community and all people of faith to stand with us and say, ‘Capital punishment must end.'”

This weekend the New York Times recapped the process that brought these four diverse Catholic papers together in a column, “Catholics on Left and Right Find Common Ground Opposing Death Penalty.”

Photo credit: “2014 Pastoral Visit of Pope Francis to Korea” by Korea.net / Korean Culture and Information Service (Jeon Han). CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

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Kansas conservatives call for repeal of the death penalty

Photo of press conference of Kansas Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty, courtesy of Kansas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

On March 17, a group of Kansas conservative leaders gathered in Topeka to declare their support for repeal of the death penalty. Their case is straightforward: the death penalty is at odds with core conservative values – a commitment to fiscal responsibility, limited government, and valuing life.

The group presented an open letter signed by more than 20 prominent conservatives who also support repeal. Signers included current and former Republican lawmakers, leaders of county-level Republican Party chapters, members of the Kansas Republican Liberty Caucus and several Republican and pro-life student groups.

Representative Bill Sutton is a Republican who represents district 43 in Central Kansas. “I am pro-life across the board. That is non-negotiable,” he said at the press conference. “By ending the death penalty, Kansas can take an important step toward promoting a culture of life, as well as end a costly and ineffective government program.” Earlier this year, Rep. Sutton detailed the high cost of Kansas’ death penalty in an op-ed appearing in Watchdog.org.

Rep. Sutton was joined by former Republican State Representative Anthony Brown and Laura Peredo, president of Ravens Respect Life, a student group from Benedictine College. Two death row exonerees, Ray Krone and Ron Keine of Witness to Innocence, also spoke about their intimate experience with the death penalty.

Keine, who has been active in Republican politics since his release, does not trust government with the power to execute: “The government almost killed me and dozens of other innocent individuals across the country who were wrongfully sentenced to death. Kansas has an opportunity this year to ensure that the state never runs that risk.”

The event was co-sponsored by the Kansas Coalition Against the Death Penalty and Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty.

A week before the press conference, Conservative heavyweight and National Review editor, Ramesh Ponnuru urged the governors of both Kansas and Nebraska to back repeal. The Nebraska Judiciary Committee voted unanimously to support repeal of the death penalty earlier this month. That bill now goes to the floor.

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BREAKING: Repeal moves forward in Nebraska!

It’s a big day in Nebraska: a key committee voted unanimously for death penalty repeal! The sponsor of the bill, Senator Ernie Chambers told the Lincoln Journal Star that this was “as good a chance to get it passed as there has ever been.”

Nebraskans from all over the state descended on the capital last week to meet with their Senators about the death penalty. A press conference featuring more than two dozen family members of murder victims generated an avalanche of amazing stories about how Nebraska’s death penalty needs to go.

Judiciary Committee members obviously listened. The bill now goes to the floor of the Unicameral Legislature.

Momentum is on our side, but we haven’t won yet. We’re working hard on the ground with our state partners, Nebraskans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.

Please help to shine the spotlight on Nebraska to back us up. Share our photo on Facebook to help spread the word.

If you live in Nebraska, please take action to contact your state Senator today: https://ejusa.org/act/NE

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Conservative outcry over Texas execution is unprecedented – *Updated*

We will be updating our Twitter feed and this post with more information as it comes in.

*Update – 12/4/2014, 1:56pm ET* Here is the statement from Panetti’s attorneys at the Texas Defender Service. It includes a thorough background on the case.

*Update – 12/4/2014, 12:01pm ET* The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has issued a stay of execution while they “consider the late arriving and complex legal questions at issue in this matter.” Read the decision here.

“Conservatives believe in a criminal justice system that is fair, just, and effective,” says EJUSA’s Marc Hyden, coordinator for Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty. “This case has made a mockery of that system.”

Marc is speaking about the execution of Scott Panetti, set for tonight in Texas. Panetti’s mental illness has been well-documented for over 30 years. At his trial, he represented himself wearing a purple cowboy costume and tried to call the Pope, John F. Kennedy, Anne Bancroft, and Jesus Christ to testify. His lawyers say that his current state of mind is worse than it has ever been. Yet Texas’ Board of Pardons and Paroles vote 7-0 to let the execution go forward.

The Governor or the Supreme Court can still step in. And they would do well to listen to the massive, nationwide outcry that the execution has generated.

Over 50 national and Texas evangelical leaders signed a letter saying that executing Panetti would “cross a moral line.’ Signers included Rev. Sam Rodriguez of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice, Lynn Hybels of the nationally prominent Willow Creek Church, and Gabriel Salguero of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition – a cast that faith blog Patheos called “gold-plated.”

“A fundamental tenet of the pro-life ethic is that all life has value,” wrote national pro-life advocate Abby Johnson in an op-ed in the Dallas Morning News about the execution. “A culture of life recognizes the value of those who are vulnerable and prioritizes safeguarding them.”

“This is the largest outpouring of support on a death penalty case we’ve seen from evangelicals, and you can see why, given the ridiculous nature of this case,” EJUSA’s Heather Beaudoin told Mother Jones last week. “As Christians, we’re called protect the most vulnerable,” she said, “and there’s just no question that Scott Panetti is in that number as someone who’s suffered from severe mental illness.” (Watch more of Heather from last night on Huffington Post Live.)

Former Presidential Candidate Ron Paul also sent a letter in support of clemency, and on Monday, 20 leading conservative leaders – including former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, conservative activist Brent Bozell, and former NRA President David Keene – weighed in.

Panetti’s case came before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals again last month. The Court declined to stop the execution, but Tom Price, a conservative judge on the court, wrote a powerful dissenting opinion calling for repeal of the death penalty for the first time. He said, “I conclude that it is wishful thinking to believe that this State will never execute an innocent person for capital murder.”

These major figures join with over 95,000 people who have signed a petition started by Panetti’s sister, asking Governor Rick Perry to stop the execution. We’ll keep you posted on Twitter as today’s events unfold. Whatever happens tonight in Texas, it is clear that a new conversation on the death penalty has begun.

Photo Credit: Texas Defender Service

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Reforming the Justice System in the Lone Star State

TX Huntsville Prison

Texas’ reputation as a lock-em-up state is losing steam. Over the last several years, Texas has closed three adult corrections facilities, reduced probation term lengths, improved funding for substance abuse treatment and other alternatives to incarceration, and helped people returning from prison to rebuild their lives. State policy-makers have also rejected various bills that would have enhanced penalties or created new crimes. All of this has begun to reduce the state’s over-reliance on incarceration without compromising public safety. Crime rates have dropped along with the prison population.

In an unexpected turn at this year’s CPAC conference, Texas Governor Rick Perry announced on the main stage that shutting down prisons was good, conservative governance. (You can watch him say it in this video, also featuring EJUSA’s Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty project.)

Last week, EJUSA’s Executive Director, Shari Silberstein, traveled to Texas to spend the day with one of the leading organizations behind this change, the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition (TCJC).

Shari and David Rogers facilitating the discussion with the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition.
Shari and David Rogers facilitating the discussion with the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition.

Silberstein and David Rogers, former Executive Director of the Partnership for Safety and Justice, led the group through a series of discussions about how to incorporate the needs of crime victims into their agenda, something that TCJC is exploring. The group discussed the challenge of redefining accountability, which is incorrectly equated with punishment in the current justice system. Silberstein and Rogers shared information about the abysmal state of victims’ services nationally and the wide array of needs that crime victims have that are unrelated to what happens to the person who harmed them.

“The Texas Criminal Justice Coalition has a reputation for being able to work across the aisle with unlikely allies,” said Silberstein. “Their passionate and talented staff were excited about the possibility of expanding on this by finding common cause with the crime victims’ community in the state.”

“Our team loved spending time with you,” said Ana Yáñez-Correa, Executive Director of TCJC. “This work holds a lot of potential for not only reforming the system, but also transforming the broader conversation about how we respond to crime. And this is especially important given the number of system-involved individuals who themselves are survivors of crime.”

TCJC has an ambitious agenda for Texas’ 2015 legislative session, but the team left the meeting ready to add to their already long to-do lists. Over the next several months, they plan to talk to allies and partners about the new framework and learn more about the state of victims’ services in Texas. EJUSA will continue to be a resource along the way, so stay tuned for more good news out of Texas in the years to come!

Photo Credit: “Day trip to Huntsville” by mlsnp is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

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New report calls for a new paradigm for addressing safety, crime, and victimization

A new report, Bridging the Divide: A new paradigm for addressing safety, crime, and victimization, was released today calling for a different approach to addressing crime.

The report says that many of the communities that are currently hurt by a prevalence of crime and violence are also being damaged by the criminal justice system’s response to crime.

“The criminal justice system is supposed to do three things,” said Shari Silberstein, Executive Director of Equal Justice USA. “It’s supposed to keep us safe, help crime victims rebuild their lives after they’ve been harmed, and hold people accountable in ways that are constructive and forward-looking. The current system’s one-size-fits-all-solution – more and harsher prisons – doesn’t achieve those goals, no less all three of them together.”

The report places a strong emphasis on meeting the needs of crime victims. Many of these needs, such as trauma intervention and counseling, medical assistance, financial compensation, relocation to a safe place, days off from work, mental health services for an affected child, grief support, etc. have nothing to do with what happens to the person who harmed them.

“Addressing urban trauma in communities afflicted by violence is a critical prevention strategy that is largely ignored by the criminal justice system,” said Lisa Good, EJUSA board member and founder of Urban Grief.

The report makes clear that the lack of trauma intervention for crime victims has a particularly strong impact on people of color.

“There is a lot of research to show that people of color are more likely to be incarcerated than white people,” said Silberstein. “It’s less widely understood that people of color are also more likely to be victims of crime. Yet those crimes are more likely to go unsolved and their suffering is often minimized or even challenged.”

The report’s primary message is to challenge the false choice between meeting the needs of crime victims and reforming failed criminal justice and corrections policies.

The report was produced by a collaborative of criminal justice reform advocates and victim advocates, including EJUSA Executive Director Shari Silberstein.

Download Bridging the Divide (pdf, 6.0MB)

Download the Executive Summary (pdf, 2.9MB)

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Another death row exoneration

In a North Carolina Courtroom on Tuesday, a judge overturned the death sentence and conviction of the state’s longest serving death row inmate. Henry McCollum walked free after DNA evidence linked the crime to another person. He had been on death row for over three decades – since he was 19 years old.

McCollum’s brother, Leon Brown was also set free. He was 15 at the time of his arrest and has been serving a life sentence since the Supreme Court outlawed the execution those who were juveniles at the time of their crime. Both McCollum and Brown are mentally disabled, and each signed coerced confessions to the crime.

Had it not been for unrelated delays in executions in North Carolina, they would likely have been executed, before this evidence was revealed by the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission.

Read the Raleigh News & Observer’s coverage of the case here.

Photo credit: Chuck Liddy/The News & Observe, used with permission.

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