We, the
comrades of Unit 1012: The VFFDP, want to thank the Nebraskans for their
efforts in saving the death penalty in their state:
Thank you, NEBRASKANS
FOR THE DEATH PENALTY!
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O Almighty God, who art a strong tower of
defence unto thy servants against the face of their enemies; We yield thee
praise and thanksgiving for our deliverance from those great and apparent
dangers wherewith we were compassed. We acknowledge it thy goodness that we
were not delivered over as a prey unto them; beseeching thee still to continue
such thy mercies towards us, that all the world may know that thou art our
Saviour and mighty Deliverer; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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Nebraskans
vote overwhelmingly to restore death penalty, nullify historic 2015 vote by
State Legislature
LINCOLN —
Nebraskans wielded their veto power on Tuesday, voting overwhelmingly to
restore the death penalty and nullify a historic 2015 vote by state lawmakers
to repeal capital punishment.
Rural voters
carried the day, voting to "repeal the repeal" by margins as large as
4-to-1 in counties outside Lincoln and Omaha.
Douglas
County, seen as a key stronghold of death-penalty opposition, appeared to
narrowly support restoring the death penalty, while Lancaster County was the
only county in the state to support retaining the death penalty repeal.
Officials
with Nebraskans for the Death Penalty said Tuesday’s vote affirmed their belief
that if voters were given the chance, they would vote to keep the death penalty
for the most heinous murders.
"The
Legislature made a big mistake on a very important issue,"
said Bob Evnen of Lincoln, a co-founder of the pro-capital punishment group,
which conducted the successful petition drive that placed the death penalty
referendum on Tuesday’s ballot.
State Sen.
Colby Coash of Lincoln, a leader with the anti-death penalty group, Retain a
Just Nebraska, said he was disappointed with the outcome but not the effort.
"This
debate was worth having," Coash said.
Some voters,
he said, may have been swayed by recent, high-profile murders, citing the case
of Nikko Jenkins, who killed four people in Omaha shortly after his release
from prison in 2013. A trial this fall in Omaha, which ended with Dr. Anthony
Garcia being found guilty of the gruesome slayings of four people connected to
Creighton University’s pathology department, also was a factor, he said.
"It’s
really hard to look at those kinds of crimes and not have an emotional
response," Coash said.
State Sen.
Ernie Chambers, who sponsored the bill to repeal the death penalty, said
Tuesday night that the vote demonstrated to him that Nebraska remains a
"hidebound and backward state."
"I have
been in this activity too long to be surprised by what happened tonight,"
he said. "It will not dishearten me, it will not deter me."
Chambers said
he would be introducing a new bill in January to get rid of the death penalty.
Tuesday’s
vote marked the second time lawmakers had been rebuffed in an effort to repeal
the death penalty. In 1979, then-Gov. Charlie Thone vetoed a repeal bill, and
the Legislature lacked the votes to override it.
Nebraska, a
conservative, law-and-order state, gained the national spotlight after the
Legislature’s landmark vote and subsequent narrow override of a veto by Gov.
Pete Ricketts.
At the time
of the repeal vote, Nebraska stood as the first conservative state to do away
with capital punishment since North Dakota in 1973. A group of conservative
senators, citing the high cost of the death penalty and its rare use, joined
with Chambers in voting to repeal the ultimate penalty.
But the
victory proved short-lived.
Shortly after
the Legislature’s vote, Nebraskans for the Death Penalty formed to put the
issue before the state’s voters.
Using
contributions from the governor, his parents and others, Nebraskans for the
Death Penalty collected more than 143,000 signatures of voters during the
summer of 2015.
Ricketts,
whose family owns the Chicago Cubs and the online brokerage firm TD Ameritrade
donated $300,000 of his own money to aid the pro-death penalty group, according
to the most recent campaign spending reports. His father, Joe, pitched in
$100,000, and his mother, Marlene, donated $25,000.
Those
donations were among the $1.3 million spent through early November by
Nebraskans for the Death Penalty.
Retain a Just
Nebraska also got some high-profile help, collecting $2.7 million through
mid-October. Its contributors included Hollywood actress Susan Sarandon, who
gave $1,500. One of its major donors was a Massachusetts organization, the
Proteus Action League, which gave $650,000 this year and $600,000 last year.
Death penalty
opponents also argued
capital punishment could possibly take an innocent person’s life. They pointed
to the case of the Beatrice Six, in which six people were wrongly convicted in
the 1985 rape and slaying of a Beatrice woman. Several of the six said their
fear of the death penalty factored into their decision to falsely confess.
A group of
retired judges was among those calling for an end to capital punishment, but
death penalty supporters countered with their own group of Nebraska sheriffs
and prosecutors who said that for the most heinous crimes, death was the most
appropriate sentence.
"It’s
not about vengeance, it’s about justice," said Pierce County Sheriff Rick
Eberhardt, who collected more than 3,000 signatures to help put the death
penalty referendum on the ballot.
On Tuesday
night, the sheriff sat quietly in a meeting room at Omaha’s Marriott Regency
Hotel with three members of the family of Evonne Tuttle, who was shot and
killed along with four others during a botched bank robbery in Norfolk in 2002.
The three gunmen all are on Nebraska’s death row.
It wasn’t a
celebration, said Eberhardt and the others, but affirmation that the state’s
residents still support the death penalty.
"It
was the right thing to do," said Christine Tuttle, Evonne’s
32-year-old daughter, of Tuesday’s vote.
"We’re
going to get justice. It’s going to happen," said
Evonne’s mother, Vivian, of Ewing, Nebraska.
Evnen said he
hoped the significant margin in favor of restoring the death penalty would
convince state lawmakers that they need to work with Ricketts, instead of
against him, to adopt a new death penalty protocol.
Coash,
however, said that Tuesday’s vote hasn’t changed a thing. Nebraska, he said,
still lacks the drugs needed to carry out a lethal injection execution.
"It
doesn’t fix the problems that the Legislature saw," he said.
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