Congratulations to the conservative Republicans of Nebraska for pushing elimination of the state’s death penalty through. Not only did they vote in the repeal, they voted to override the GOP governor’s veto of it.
They saw it as a simple matter of good governance. The costs and benefits added up to eliminating the punishment. They made a practical, common sense decision. Good for them!! Would that all government worked that way.
Yes, there are cases, such as Timothy McVeigh, wherein the death penalty is richly deserved. However, I can easily recall my emotional reaction when he was executed. I was upset by it. I very much prefer that such persons be locked up and forgotten. (Anyone think about the Unibomber in recent months? Not me.)
But my feelings, and those of people like me, were not what the Nebraskans were considering this week. They probably also were not thinking about the chances of executing innocent persons. Instead, they were thinking about the difficulties in obtaining lethal drugs and the costs associated with the death penalty. I’m OKAY with that.
Would that such a practical approach be used in more political decisions.
Any chance their decision was based at least in part on helping to support the multi-billion dollar industry of private prison systems? They make a lot more money if they continue to warehouse all those inmates, rather than releasing or killing them.
Doubtful. Nebraska hasn’t executed anybody since 1997 (and had executed only three people before that since SCOTUS reinstated the death penalty in 1976.)
ETA: Nebraska doesn’t have private prisons, anyway.
What would be a right one, or are there any?
I’m surprised, but pleased. The NE legislators apparently weren’t sufficiently swayed by a perceived need to be seen as “tough on crime”, but more by a desire not to be held back by a swamp of litigation, cost, practicality, and *maybe *even simple human decency. Well done, and thanks to Sen. Ernie Chambers for his persistence.
There are some crimes so heinous that there exists no punishment other than death which the perpetrators thereof deserve and which we are capable of inflicting upon them. The OP himself mentions one such perpetrator. I can name others; Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Ted Bundy, Osama bin Laden, Cameron Willingham, Adolf Eichmann.
Were the criminal justice system so fundamentally flawed that it was incapable of honestly determining guilt and innocence, it would be a good reason to temporarily suspend capital punishment. This is not the case.
You’re the guy who thinks the US has never made a mistake with the death penalty, right? I ask, since one of these is not like the others, and it’s the one’s whose guilt is quite questionable.
I wouldn’t say “never”, but I would say “in the past 40 years”.
Willingham’s guilt is not questionable. It is mere pseudoscience and special pleading that is relied upon by those who have made a cause celebre out of him that he is even presented as being innocent.
Btw, only some of the Republicans voted against the death penalty because of cost reasons. A good number of Republicans who voted against the DP did so because of religious reasons.
Look, it’s IMHO, and you’re entitled to whatever opinion you want to have, but it’s clear that Willingham’s guilt is not just questionable, it’s questioned.
I have no real interest in getting into it here, but I was mostly amused that you felt like sneaking the name of a convicted two-bit Texas murderer into a list including Osama bin Laden and Adolf Eichmann, which doesn’t fit at all. Like partisans using terms like Demoncrats or Repuglicans, it can only be interpreted as making a snide, passing comment on his guilt in lieu of defending the argument on its merits, suggesting an underlying weakness in the argument.