If Nebraska can do it, why not Colorado?
Nebraska has a unicameral, officially nonpartisan legislature, but there is no doubt it is controlled by Republicans. And those red-state lawmakers last week voted by a lopsided 32 to 15 to abolish capital punishment.
More surprisingly, they voted Wednesday to override Gov. Pete Ricketts’ veto, with only two senators switching their position.
Among the striking aspects of this chain of events is the pragmatism exhibited by senators, some of whom actually support the death penalty but recognize that it has become almost impossible to implement on a consistent (and therefore fair) basis.
Nebraska hasn’t put a murderer to death since 1997.
Colorado hasn’t put a murderer to death since 1997, too.
And before that in Colorado, you have to go back to 1967 to find an execution.
Other lawmakers in Nebraska worried about the possibility of false convictions, given recent exonerations elsewhere in the nation. And at least in order to “follow through with my life convictions, which is life from conception to natural death.”
Colorado’s legislature is divided between a Democratic-controlled House and a Republican Senate, and any attempt to repeal the death penalty is likely to get little traction in the upper chamber. But Republicans there might at least consider the arguments from Nebraska.
Do they really believe, for example, the death penalty will ever be put to regular use here? Do they relish the resource-consuming spectacles of endless motions and delays in trials when the death sentence is in play (see Holmes, James), or the prospect of decades of foot-dragging appeals?
False convictions in death-penalty trials are not an issue in Colorado, but where exactly is the justice in executing one particularly heinous murderer every few decades while many other equally heinous murderers are sentenced to life without parole?
Two years ago Gov. John Hickenlooper derailed a move in the legislature to repeal the death penalty, while also issuing a temporary reprieve to death-row inmate Nathan Dunlap and declaring that he personally opposed capital punishment.
Unlike Nebraska’s Ricketts, in other words, Hickenlooper presumably would sign a repeal that reached his desk.
But it’s got to get there first.
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