PoliticsPoliticsDeath Penalty

Nebraska Lawmakers On The Cusp Of Repealing The Death Penalty Amid Governor's Threats To Veto

The U.S. Is About To Have One Less Death Penalty State
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FILE - In this Thursday, Oct. 9, 2014 photo, the gurney in the the execution chamber at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary is pictured in McAlester, Okla. Oklahoma plans to resume executions Thursday, Jan. 15, 2015, after botching its last one and will use the same three-drug method as a Florida lethal injection scheduled for the same day. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki, File)

Nebraska is primed to end the death penalty, which would bring the number of execution states down to 31.

In the waning days of the spring legislature, lawmakers advanced a bill to repeal the death penalty in a 30-16 vote. The bill now faces one more vote on the final reading, expected early next week.

The final vote is largely considered a formality, and if it stands, the legislature will have a veto-proof majority. Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts -- who has already vowed to repeal the bill if it passes his desk -- could lobby to get lawmakers to change their vote.

But the bill likely won't even need the governor's approval, says Stacy Anderson, executive director of Nebraskans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. She told The Huffington Post immediately after the vote that Friday's count is expected to hold.

"I think the senators have made up their minds," Anderson said. "They've studied the issue and they're ready to get this bill through."

Still, Governor Ricketts has procured more lethal injection drugs to ensure the state can continue executions. The governor has five days to veto the bill, and the legislature has another five days to vote to override the his veto.

If the bill ultimately succeeds, Nebraska will be the first state to repeal the death penalty since Maryland eliminated the punishment in 2013. The last state with a conservative majority to repeal the death penalty was North Dakota in 1973.

A coalition of Republican lawmakers behind the push to end the death penalty in Nebraska are part of a growing movement among conservatives to shun capital punishment. Abolitionists have criticized the death penalty as being out of step with conservative values of fiscal responsibility, protecting life and limiting the role of government.

Nebraska's bill would replace the death penalty with life without parole as the highest punishment. The bill would retroactively apply to the 11 inmates currently on Nebraska's death row, commuting each of their sentences to life without parole.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story mistakenly stated that Nebraska's bill is not retroactive.

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Before You Go

The Long Wait For Death Row Inmates
29 YEARS ON DEATH ROW(01 of08)
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NAME: Edward Lee Elmore
STATE: South Carolina
RELEASED IN 2002

In 1982, Dorothy Edwards of Greenwood, South Carolina, an elderly white woman beloved by her community, was brutally murdered and raped in her home. Edwards' neighbor offered up Elmore, her handyman, as the perpetrator of the crime, even as he maintained his innocence. Elmore was arrested, went to trial 82 days later, and received a death sentence -- a conviction that he received three times as appeal courts overturned each verdict. The case was riddled with bad (even planted) evidence, an incompetent defense, a tainted crime scene, and police coverups. He spent 29 years on death row until his defense argued that he was mentally disabled and legally could not be executed, so he was reduced to a life sentence. In 2002 -- 29 years later -- he pled guilty to murder in exchange for release.

Check out CNN's original series "Death Row Stories" (Sundays 9pm ET/PT) for a deeper look into this case. (credit:South Carolina Department of Corrections)
25 YEARS ON DEATH ROW(02 of08)
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NAME: Krishna Maharaj
STATE: Florida
COMMUTED TO LIFE SENTENCE IN 2002

One-time millionaire and business magnate Kris Maharaj was convicted on two counts of murder in 1987. The case was plagued by covered-up evidence, false eyewitness accounts, and a shoddy defense (who didn't call any of his many witnesses to the stand as a "tactical" maneuver). Clive Stafford Smith has worked on this case for years, and in 2002, succeeded in commuting Maharaj’s death sentence to a life term following serious misconduct on the part of the judge and prosecution. Smith continues to fight for Maharaj's release, saying: “It is unfathomable to most rational people that the US Supreme Court says that innocence is not a reason to set a prisoner free. That Kris has spent 10,000 days in prison for a crime he did not commit is little more than legal kidnapping.”

Check out CNN's original series "Death Row Stories" (Sundays 9pm ET/PT) for a deeper look into this case. (credit:<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/Krishna_Maharaj.jpg" target="_blank" role="link" class=" js-entry-link cet-external-link" data-vars-item-name="Wikimedia Commons" data-vars-item-type="text" data-vars-unit-name="5bb8f942e4b0877501026381" data-vars-unit-type="buzz_body" data-vars-target-content-id="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/Krishna_Maharaj.jpg" data-vars-target-content-type="url" data-vars-type="web_external_link" data-vars-subunit-name="before_you_go_slideshow" data-vars-subunit-type="component" data-vars-position-in-subunit="11" data-vars-position-in-unit="14">Wikimedia Commons</a>)
33 YEARS ON DEATH ROW(03 of08)
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NAME: Manuel Valle
STATE: Florida
EXECUTED: 9/28/11
LAST MEAL: Fried chicken breast, white rice, garlic toast, peach cobbler and a Coca-Cola.

Manuel Valle killed a police officer in Coral Gables, Florida, in 1978 after being stopped for a traffic violation. In the dissenting opinion of Valle v. Florida, Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer stated that the inmate's long stay on death row amounted to cruel and unusual punishment. He said, "I have little doubt about the cruelty of so long a period of incarceration under sentence of death." (credit:Florida Department of Corrections)
33 YEARS ON DEATH ROW(04 of08)
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NAME: Jack Alderman
STATE: Georgia
EXECUTED: 9/16/08
LAST MEAL: Did not request a last meal. Ate regular prison meal of baked fish, peas, cole slaw, carrots, cheese grits, bun, fruit juice and chocolate cake.

Jack Alderman was convicted in 1975 of killing his wife, Barbara Jean Alderman. At the time of his execution, he was the longest-serving death row prisoner who had been executed in the United States. (credit:Georgia Department of Corrections)
31 YEARS ON DEATH ROW(05 of08)
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NAME: David Lee Powell
STATE: Texas
EXECUTED: 6/15/2010
LAST MEAL: Four eggs, four chicken drumsticks, salsa, four jalapeno peppers, lettuce, tortillas, hashbrowns, garlic bread, two pork chops, white and yellow grated cheese, sliced onions and tomatoes, a pitcher of milk and a vanilla shake.

In May 1978, Powell fatally shot 26-year-old Austin police officer Ralph Ablanedo 10 times after he and his girlfriend were pulled over for missing a rear license plate. The two were on the way to a drug deal at the time of the crime. Opponents to his execution cited his exemplary behavior in prison and argued that he was no longer a threat to society, which is a legal requirement for capital punishment. Thirty-one years, three trials, and multiple appeals later, he died by lethal injection.

He spent the longest time on death row of anyone in Texas since the state resumed death penalty executions in 1982. (credit:Texas Department of Criminal Justice)
43 YEARS ON DEATH ROW (06 of08)
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NAME: Gary Alvord
STATE: Florida
EXECUTED: Died of brain tumor in 2013

In 1974, Gary Alvord was sentenced to death for strangling three women in their home in Tampa, Florida after he escaped from a mental hospital. Although Alvord faced execution several times, his history of mental illness prevented the sentence from being carried out. Last year, after 43 years on death row, he died of natural causes. In the time he spent awaiting execution, 74 other inmates were sent to their deaths. Bill Sheppard, who represented Alvord, has said: “Gary is a product of a sick system. He was a living example of why we should not have the death penalty.... I would love for the state of Florida to tell us how much money they wasted trying to kill a guy they couldn't kill."
33 YEARS ON DEATH ROW(07 of08)
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NAME: Reginald Griffin
STATE: Missouri
CHARGES DISMISSED IN 2013

Reginald Griffin was implicated in the 1983 stabbing death of a fellow inmate at the Moberly Correctional Center in Moberly, Missouri, where he was serving time for an armed assault conviction. He along with two other inmates were charged with capital murder in 1987. There was no physical evidence linking Griffin to the crime, and in subsequent trials, the two inmates who served as witnesses for the prosecution in were offered benefits to testify. In 2011, the Missouri Supreme Court found that the state had withheld critical evidence and overturned Griffin's conviction. In 2013, all charges were dismissed. Upon his release, Cindy Short, one of his attorneys, said: "We humans are flawed, and those flaws have led to wrongful arrests, wrongful convictions and, unfortunately, this situation where time and time again you see prosecutors holding onto cases, even when evidence of innocence is clear." (credit:Death Penalty Information Center)
36 YEARS ON DEATH ROW(08 of08)
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NAME: Michael Selsor
STATE: Oklahoma
EXECUTED: 5/1/12
LAST MEAL: Kentucky Fried Chicken’s crispy two breast and one wing meal with potato wedges and baked beans, a chicken thigh, apple turnover, two biscuits and honey, salt, pepper and ketchup.

In 1975, Michael Selsor shot gas-station clerk Clayton Chandler six times during a robbery in Tulsa, Oklahoma along with his accomplice, Richard Eugene Dodson. Although he was tried by a jury and sentenced to death in 1976, the U.S. Supreme Court and Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals ruled the death penalty unconstitutional later that year. Selsor's conviction was overturned by the U.S. Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in 1996; however, his 1998 retrial ended in another death sentence. After 36 years, Selsor was executed in Oklahoma by lethal injection. (credit:AP)
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