The Nebraska Legislature has voted to end the death penalty in the state, overriding the governor’s veto.
Lawmakers voted 30-19 to abolish capital punishment in Nebraska on Wednesday. Only 30 votes were required to override the veto.
The Daily Signal previously reported that Nebraska lawmakers approved legislation that would end capital punishment in the state in a 32-to-15 vote despite the governor’s threat to veto it.
Many of the senators who supported the legislation argued that their conservative principles were incompatible with support for the death penalty. They argued that the process of carrying out the death penalty is too expensive and bureaucratic, and that ending a life is not a proper function for the government.
Nebraska is the first conservative state to abolish the death penalty since North Dakota did so in 1973.
Gov. Pete Ricketts, R-Neb., a supporter of the death penalty, expressed his disappointment in a statement after the vote.
“My words cannot express how appalled I am that we have lost a critical tool to protect law enforcement and Nebraska families,” Ricketts said. “While the legislature has lost touch with the citizens of Nebraska, I will continue to stand with Nebraskans and law enforcement on this important issue.”
John Malcolm, the director of the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation, said “while disappointing to many, especially victims’ families, this is a not terribly surprising result.”
“Death penalty opponents have been quite successful at making it extremely difficult to carry out the death penalty in an expeditious, cost-effective, and humane manner,” Malcolm said. “So it understandable, I suppose, that even those who philosophically support the death penalty might reach the conclusion, as some Nebraska Legislature clearly did, that it simply isn’t worth it.”
“It is still worth noting, however, that the federal government, a majority of states, and a majority of the American people still believe that the ultimate punishment is the only appropriate sentence for particularly depraved and vicious killers,” he concluded.
Marc Hyden, the national advocacy coordinator for Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty, told The Daily Signal that capital punishment is “antithetical to core conservative principles.”
“Conservatives are increasingly uncomfortable with the death penalty,” he said.
In order to be considered conservative, Hyden says, a policy should be “pro-life, fiscally responsible and representative of limited government” and the death penalty is none of those things.
Hyden says there is “no greater power than the power to take a life,” and therefore that power shouldn’t be trusted to “an error-prone government.”
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, Nebraska is now one of 19 states, along with the District of Columbia, that prohibit capital punishment.
