Nebraska Legislature Votes to Abolish Death Penalty

Nebraska's unicameral legislature voted to abolish the death penalty 32-15. That's more than enough to override Gov. Pete Ricketts' threatened veto. 

Nebraska is a conservative state that has had the death penalty for forty years. But after several botched executions over the past few years in Nebraska and other states, conservatives have been questioning its legitimacy and efficacy.

And it's about time. Conservatives constantly talk about government overreach, incompetence and abuse of power. What greater abuse of power can there possibly be than the state taking the life of innocent person?

We know that cops and prosecutors frequently lie, elicit perjury from informants and withhold exculpatory evidence. We know eye witnesses are frequently mistaken. We know forensic examiners frequently use bogus science, make mistakes, cut corners or just make stuff up.

As of June, 2014, 316 wrongfully convicted people have been exonerated by DNA testing, including 18 sentenced to death. Research shows that 4% of people on death row are wrongly convicted. How many innocent people were executed?

"We cannot estimate that number directly but we believe it is comparatively low," authors wrote. "If the rate were the same as our estimate for false death sentences, the number of innocents executed in the United States in the past 35 years would be more than 50. We do not believe this has happened."

They "don't believe." Isn't any number greater than zero completely unacceptable in a democracy governed by the rule of law?

Gov. Ricketts said that Nebraska is getting new drugs and that execution by lethal injection should resume. But why should that matter? We used to execute people by hanging, the gas chamber and the electric chair. We used to watch people burn and jerk in the chair, choke and gasp in the gas chamber, and twitch and twist in the wind at the end of the hangman's noose.

We don't execute people that way anymore because it's disgusting and shows exactly how petty and evil killing people really is. We're supposed to be better than the murderers.

So why are we now so bent out of shape because a couple of murderers executed by lethal injection moaned and wheezed for 20 minutes before they kicked off? Death penalty supporters like Ricketts are ashamed of what the death penalty really is. They want to cover up its disgusting nature, to make it seem serene and painless. So they want to sedate their victims to cover up the barbarity of executing people.

Conservatives should be on the forefront of opposition to the death penalty. Our government should not be in the position of making irrevocable errors in the administration of justice. Giving victims "closure" is not a Constitutional right; revenge provides neither closure nor happiness; vengeance is not justice.

To paraphrase Blackstone, isn't it better to let 7,482 murderers rot in jail for the rest of their lives than to execute 50 innocent men?