Let us not
forget Evonne Tuttle who was murdered with
with 4 people in the Norfolk on September 26, 2002. Let us support the family
members by remembering the victim (and the other 4 of course) by voting repeal (DO NOT vote Retain) to save the
death penalty.
Let us hear from the victim’s family members:
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Survivors include three daughters, Christine,
18, a student at Nebraska Wesleyan University in Lincoln, Virginia, 5, and
Sarah, 3, both at home; her mother of Ewing; her birth father, Stanley Bartos
of Stevensville, Mont.; and two sisters, Rozan Smith of Creighton and Angela
Charf of Omaha. She was preceded in death by her father and grandparents.
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INTERNET SOURCE: http://www.omaha.com/news/politics/heartfelt-pleas-for-and-against-nebraska-death-penalty-at-hearing/article_33277278-f737-5813-9e53-20e8b150f444.html
Heartfelt pleas for and against Nebraska death penalty at hearing
- By Andrew J. Nelson / World-Herald staff writer
- Updated Oct 21, 2016
The day the
Nebraska Legislature ended the death penalty in Nebraska was a painful one for
Vivian Tuttle.
Tuttle’s
daughter, Evonne, was one of five people killed in a bank robbery in Norfolk on
Sept. 26, 2002, and Tuttle said at a death penalty hearing Tuesday in Omaha
that only an execution could bring the killers to account.
She disagreed
with opponents who said the process is too costly.
“You
talk about the money, let me tell you, my daughter’s blood that was spilled on
that bank floor was worth more than the any of the money that it took to do any
of (that).”
The hearing
was on Referendum 426, which, if approved by voters Nov. 8, would restore the
death penalty in Nebraska. It was moderated by Nebraska Secretary of State John
Gale and was one of three to occur in the state.
A number of
death penalty opponents also spoke. Matt Maly of Omaha, coordinator for
Nebraska Conservatives Concerned about the Death Penalty, criticized capital
punishment as bad public policy.
“Do you
really think that law enforcement is lacking a critical tool in Minnesota,
which consistently has one of the lowest murder rates in the entire country and
hasn’t had the death penalty since 1911?” he said.
The
referendum seeks to repeal Legislative Bill 268, which did away with capital
punishment in Nebraska, replacing it with life in prison without parole for
first-degree murder. .
A careful
reading of the ballot language will be needed. It will ask voters to choose to
“retain” or “repeal” the law.
A vote to
“retain” would get rid of Nebraska’s death penalty. A vote to “repeal” would
reinstate it.
Tuesday’s
hearing was at the Barbara Weitz Community Engagement Center at the University
of Nebraska at Omaha campus. About 60 attended.
Death penalty
opponents attacked capital punishment as immoral and expensive.
“When a life
is on the line, one mistake is too many,” said Marilyn Felion of Omaha.
Many
anti-death-penalty speakers invoked the case of the Beatrice Six, in which the
threat of execution influenced the plaintiffs to plead guilty or no contest to
a brutal slaying that they did not commit.
Those for the
death penalty said the stiffest of punishments is needed for the most heinous
of crimes. Death, they said, is an effective deterrent, while a life sentence
raises the possibility that killers could still get released.
The other hearings are:
» Oct. 13, 6:30 p.m., University of Nebraska at
Kearney, Student Union, 1013 W. 27th St.
» Oct. 18, 6:30 p.m., Nebraska State Capitol, Room
1525, Lincoln
INTERNET SOURCE: http://www.kearneyhub.com/news/local/tuttle-execution-will-be-justice-for-mom-s-murder/article_6c896e66-89f1-57a2-beef-f7e20b5f20cf.html?mode=jqm
Tuttle:
Execution will be justice for mom's murder
Testimony for
and against Nebraska's death penalty heard at public hearing at UNK
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Pierce County Sheriff Rick Eberhardt: Pierce
County Sheriff Rick Eberhardt testified in favor of the death penalty Thursday
night at a death penalty public hearing at the University of Nebraska at
Kearney. During his testimony, he held up two pictures of state senators
celebrating on the floor after passing LB268, which abolishes the death
penalty. Eberhardt was at the capital that day with Vivian Tuttle, mother of
Evonne Tuttle who was murdered at U.S. Bank in Norfolk in 2002. You cant
imagine what Vivian went through to see that, Eberhardt said. - Erika
Pritchard, Kearney Hub
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KEARNEY — Evonne Tuttle was 37 years
young when she was shot and killed in a robbery at U.S. Bank in 2002 in
Norfolk, said her daughter Christine Tuttle.
Evonne was one of five people
murdered that day.
“My mom is standing at
the teller counter cashing a paycheck, a paycheck from a part time job that she
quit so she could spend time with her family. As she is standing there smiling,
laughing and talking with Samuel (Sun), you see three armed men in masks
carrying guns walking into the bank and you just wanna yell, but they can’t
hear you, that they’re coming,”
Christine Tuttle said of the surveillance video. “But
before the robbery even starts, it’s done, and all five people are dead.”
Christine Tuttle, now a South Dakota
resident, testified at a public hearing about the death penalty Thursday night
at the University of Nebraska at Kearney to voice her support to repeal LB268,
which was passed in 2015 by the Nebraska Legislature to abolish the state’s
death sentence.
Three men who robbed and murdered
at the bank that day — Jose Sandoval, Jorge Galindo, Erick Vela — are on death
row, and Christine Tuttle told the crowd of about 25 people at the hearing that
she would like to see it stay that way.
“These men on death row
have nothing to lose,” she said
of all the men in Nebraska on death row. “I believe if
they had the opportunity to kill again, they would. The only way this can never
happen is for them to be executed.”
Christine Tuttle added that she
doesn’t believe justice will be served until the men on death row are executed.
The 1½-hour hearing’s host was
Secretary of State John Gale. Testimony was heard from nine people on both
sides of the issue.
Gale explained that on the Nov. 8
general election ballot, Nebraskans will choose to repeal or retain LB268. He
said a vote to retain LB268 will abolish the death penalty, and a vote to
repeal will allow the death penalty to continue in Nebraska.
Explaining why he voted for LB268
and testifying to retain the bill was Speaker of the Legislature Galen Hadley
of Kearney. Hadley said he weighed 12 questions in making his decision, which
led him to decide it was time to eliminate capital punishment in Nebraska.
- Is there a better alternative,
such as life without a chance of parole?
- Might we execute an innocent
person?
- How much does a person’s race
play in the decision of capital punishment?
- Is the death penalty system too
costly?
- Does capital punishment deter
crime?
- Does the death penalty help the
victim’s family reach closure on the issue?
- Is the death penalty applied
consistently?
- What are the religious views of
capital punishment and are they important to the decision?
- Are mentally ill people
executed?
- If we keep the death penalty,
are we in line with countries around the world that we do not wish to be in
line with?
- Can one be pro-life on the
question of abortion and pro-death on the question of capital punishment?
- Can we make capital punishment
even happen in Nebraska?
“I voted on the floor on over a
1,000 bills in my eight years in the legislature, and by far away this was the
most difficult vote,” said Hadley.
Hadley explained a few answers to
the questions he asked himself.
“Here
in Nebraska we have life imprisonment. The attorney general of our state has
said when someone is sentenced to life they are not eligible for parole. We can
be confident that the worst offenders, we can keep them separate from society
forever with life imprisonment,” Hadley
said.
Matt Maly, Coordinator of
Nebraska Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty, also believes in
abolishing the death penalty. He said Minnesota has one of the lowest murder
rates in the country and hasn’t had the death penalty since 1911.
“If life without parole works for
Bismarck, it can work for Lincoln. If it works for Des Moines, it can work for
Kearney. If it works for Minneapolis, it can work for Omaha,” he said.
Nebraska Treasurer Don Stenberg
said a life sentence is no deterrent to prevent inmates from assaulting or
murdering a corrections officer. He urged voters to repeal LB268 to prevent
heinous murders.
“There’s no such thing as life
without parole because a judge can always commute a sentence,” Stenberg said.
He said there has been an issue
brought up of potential innocence of someone on death row.
“In the modern Nebraska era,
there is not any evidence that an innocent person has been executed,” he added.
Hadley said that the legislators
examined cost studies from other states regarding the death penalty.
“Dr. Ernie Goss from Creighton
University showed our death penalty costs us $14.6 million above the cost of
life imprisonment,” Hadley said.
Maly said the death penalty is
costly to taxpayers.
“Every dollar that we waste on
the death penalty is a dollar that doesn’t go towards crime prevention programs
and more police officers on the streets to keep our communities safe.”
Stenberg argued the death penalty
poses no or minimal fiscal burden in Nebraska by citing the Commission on
Public Advocacy, the Department of Correctional Services, the Board of Parole
and the state Attorney General.
Hadley said one prisoner has been
on Nebraska’s death row for 35 years and this is cruel to the victim’s family.
“Mimi Kelle’s brother was
murdered, and she testified repeatedly that the death penalty process — with
the high-profile appeals, and decades of waiting — was a terrible punishment
for her family,” he said.
Christine Tuttle believes in
another kind of closure. She said her mother’s killer, Sandoval, wrote her a
letter from prison that if she doesn’t forgive him, she will go to hell. He
also told her if she wants answers she can visit him in prison.
“How would that make
you feel? He is still victimizing me and my family even from death row,” Christine Tuttle said. “I
want to know that I will never receive another letter from him, and I also want
to know that these men on death row will never hurt another person.”
INTERNET SOURCE: http://www.omaha.com/opinion/editorial-vote-repeal-to-save-nebraska-s-death-penalty/article_d566b716-36c8-5a7b-ab82-a2a7e6ea53f7.html
Editorial: Vote repeal to save Nebraska's death penalty
Updated 4 hrs ago
Nebraskans are not a bloodthirsty
people.
Many who have supported the death
penalty for decades feel reservations about the potential, however small, for a
mistake.
And there is a salient argument
from death penalty opponents that Nebraska hasn’t carried out an execution for
nearly 19 years.
It’s important to consider the
findings of Creighton University economics professor Ernie Goss that death
penalty states pay more for criminal justice, though the difference is
debatable.
A handful of public policies,
however, are so fundamental to society as communal expressions of the limits of
acceptable behavior that they cannot be argued away. The death penalty — and
its underlying principle, that of a public stand against the most depraved
killers — is one such policy. It is a statement of the outermost boundary of an
ordered society. It draws a needed line: Those who do worse than kill, those
who kill wickedly, risk losing their own lives.
In practical terms, the death
penalty provides the clearest deterrent effect on criminals already serving
life sentences. Prisoners must face consequences if they act out against guards
or fellow inmates. Otherwise, little leverage remains to keep the worst
criminals from killing with impunity.
And don’t be fooled. Lawyers who
argue the cruelty of the death penalty today would turn soon against the
penalty of life in prison without parole if the death penalty were no longer an
option. So there’s a question of how long life would mean life.
Despite its flaws, the death
penalty should remain an option for the worst capital crimes. Some people are
so dangerous that society can never set them free. And some acts of violence
are so heinous that the perpetrator forfeits the right to a long life behind
bars.
Consider Gottlieb Neigenfind, the
first man the State of Nebraska put to death, in 1903, after the state took
over hangings from county sheriffs.
Newspapers described him as a
“degenerate drunk” with a volatile temper. His wife, widow Anna Peters, was a
mother of four. Their marriage lasted five months. On Sept. 11, 1902, he
visited her family’s farm near Pierce, demanding to see his new son. Told to
leave, he later returned with a revolver. He gunned down Anna’s father, then
shot Anna’s mother, who survived.
He fatally shot Anna, then hiked up her skirt
and shot her again. Anna’s sister tore free from his grip and got away. The
killer later fired on deputies.
Before he was hanged, Neigenfind
said he had dreamed about the murders before he committed them and said, “My
dreams always come true.”
Each of the 22 men executed since
then by the State of Nebraska earned his fate by destroying innocent lives in
equally horrifying ways, from torture to rape to killing for sport.
These are the state’s worst
killers.
Starkweather.
Otey.
And who could
forget John Joubert, the Offutt airman who in 1983 kidnapped, tortured and
murdered Danny Joe Eberle, 13, and Christopher Walden, 12, in Sarpy County? He
later admitted killing 11-year-old Richard Stetson in Maine.
His prison
drawings illustrated torturing the boys. An expert testified Joubert would kill
again if ever released. Joubert was electrocuted in 1996.
For killers
like these, capital punishment should remain a viable answer. To be sure, it
should be used sparingly, with reasonable court appeals to guard against
errors.
Public
opinion polling shows most Nebraskans agree. Petition circulators last year
submitted 143,478 valid signatures — enough not only to ensure a public vote,
but also to postpone repeal until after the general election.
State
senators voting to eliminate Nebraska’s death penalty deserve credit and
respect. Their debate afforded this issue the seriousness it deserves. Decent
people can disagree on significant issues. The question of whether to continue
to allow state government to deprive a citizen of life is a personal, moral
issue, guided often by faith.
While many
Nebraskans are uneasy with Gov. Pete Ricketts’ involvement in the petition
process, it is voters who will ultimately decide this issue.
If the death
penalty is restored, Ricketts, corrections officials and Nebraska Attorney
General Doug Peterson need to revise the state’s drug cocktail. Options exist,
from inquiring about the federal government’s planned drug cocktail for Boston
bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to exploring other states’ methods. Nebraskans aren’t
out for blood. But if the state does have a death penalty, it must be able to
carry out the sentence.
Nebraskans
should vote REPEAL on Nov. 8 to restore Nebraska’s death penalty.
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