Sunday, November 6, 2016

V.F.F.D.P IN NEBRASKA: VOTE REPEAL TO RESTORE THE DEATH PENALY

  
If you SUPPORT the death penalty then vote REPEAL to keep it.

The death penalty is used sparingly as just punishment for the most heinous of crimes - mass murders, serial killers, child killers and those who kill law enforcement officers. It is a deterrent, especially for prisoners serving life sentences who otherwise could kill a prison guard without consequence. And the death penalty protects us from evil that otherwise would threaten our families and communities.

Don't believe death penalty opponents who say life in prison without parole is a viable alternative to the death penalty. In recent days actions by the courts and Legislature resulted in a life sentence imposed for the 1990 murder of a police officer in Nebraska was changed to a period of years making the killer eligible for parole in the future. Life does NOT mean life.

And don't believe the outrageous suggestion that the death penalty costs $14.6 million annually in Nebraska. The Legislature's independent Fiscal Office weighed-in on the cost three times in 2015 with official statements indicating repeal of the death penalty would NOT result in cost savings. The $14.6 million figure is economic theory and has no basis in actual cost.

Carefully consider this important decision and we hope you will join the majority of Nebraskans in voting to REPEAL LB 268 to keep the death penalty in Nebraska.




            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:

Two families. Two victims. Two different views of Nebraska's death penalty.
by Bill Kelly, Senior Producer, NET News

November 3, 2016 - 6:45am

  



Over the years the death penalty has divided the people with the most personal stake possible in the issue: family members of the murder victims.

Having watched the crimes, the trials, and years of delays in the executions, they have reached very different conclusions about the merits of the death penalty.

During the public hearings held in October by the Nebraska secretary of state, family members touched by two different death penalty cases presented testimony.  

THE NORFOLK BANK MURDERS

In 2002 three men burst into a bank in Norfolk, Nebraska. In a matter of minutes they had fled with money, leaving four bank employees and a customer dead. All three killers were sentenced to death. To date, none have been executed.

The daughter and mother of the customer killed that day, Evonne Tuttle, remain strong advocates of maintaining the death penalty in Nebraska. Vivian Tuttle, Evonne's mother, testified at the hearings in Omaha and Lincoln. Christine Tuttle, Evonne's daughter, spoke in Kearney.

Vivian Tuttle

The pain, the sorrow, never goes away. I went to every single trial. I sat through every one of them and I saw six different times my daughter get down on her knees, bow her head, put her hands behind her back, and (Jose) Sandoval shot her in the back of the head. I saw that six times, and that’s never going to go away. That’s always going to be with me.

Yes, I want these people to have the death penalty. The law of our land said it was such a heinous, terrible crime, that they should have the death penalty. You talk about the money? Let me tell you. My daughter’s blood that was spilled on that bank floor was worth more than any of the money that it took to do any of this.

Christine Tuttle

I don’t have any data. I don’t have any statistics. I don’t have any Bible verses. I just have my story. As far as the price of the death penalty goes, there are all different kinds of figures, but honestly, the price does not matter to me. How much would just one more hug with my mom cost, or how much would just one more Christmas or birthday cost? Some things you just can’t put a price on. Capital punishment is an investment worth taking. These ten men on death row have nothing to lose. I believe, if they had an opportunity to kill again, they would. The only way this can never happen is for them to be executed.

MICHAEL RYAN’S CULT MURDERS

The deaths of two people at the hand of Michael Ryan remain one of the most bizarre chapters in Nebraska criminal history. The names of the victims, 26-year old James Thimm and 6-year old Rickie Stice are, to the disappointment of their families, often overlooked.

Ryan lead a small doomsday cult on a farm outside of Rulo, Nebraska. After Thimm questioned the group's beliefs he was tortured to death on Ryan’s command. Ryan was sentenced to death. He died on death row of brain cancer 30 years after the murders took place.

Thimm’s sister, Miriam, has opposed the death penalty. She spoke at the hearing in Lincoln.

Miriam Thimm Kelle

In 1985, my brother James, Jim to us, was tortured to death, and his killer, Michael Ryan, was eventually sent to death row. I have seen, over and over, how Nebraska’s penalty is a false hope to victims. When they sentence someone to death, we sentence the family, too.

Michael Ryan was sentenced to death over thirty years ago; at that time, my son was in diapers. My son now has children of his own, and until last year, Michael Ryan sat on death row, and when he died of cancer, the justice of execution that was promised my family never came.
When we were assured by authorities, over and over again, that his sentence would soon be carried out, it breaks my heart to see how other families in our state are hanging on to this false promise of an execution.

I would give anything to go back in time, and change that death sentence to life imprisonment. If that happened, my children would have grown up without seeing their uncle’s killer become a celebrity, as he slowly worked his way through the court system.

For “Classroom Conversations: Nebraska’s Death Penalty Vote,” NET News brought advocates from each side of the issue to answer questions from students at Western Nebraska Community College in Scottsbluff,Northeast Community College in Norfolk and Metropolitan Community College in Omaha. These lively discussions are the foundation of a 30-minute television program and additional web content you can find on the project web site.

Some in my family waited in vain for these decades for Michael Ryan to be executed. Each year, their pain was compounded by the fact that the justice system failed to deliver the justice that they were promised. Had we been given a sentence of life without the possibility for parole, we would have left the legal system behind thirty years ago, and be able to focus our energy on our family, and our grief, and not the false promise of an execution. This is purgatory.

Some in my family wished Michael Ryan executed; others didn’t. We should have been united in remembering our loving memories of our brother, Jim, comforting one another. This punishment created a rift in our family. Sadly, our case is not unusual; Nebraska has not executed in almost twenty years, and we have one man who has been sitting on our death row since 1980.


  
Sherman

Waite

Son, brother of Anthony Garcia victim want justice of death penalty
  Updated Nov 4, 2016

Shirlee Sherman's brother and son say they know how she would feel about whether her convicted killer, Anthony Garcia, should get the death penalty. 

Jeff Sherman, 42, was a newspaper carrier in Omaha 33 years ago when John Joubert abducted and stabbed to death Danny Joe Eberle, 13, of Bellevue and also a newspaper carrier, and Christopher Walden, 12, of Papillion.

The circumstances of the murders frightened the young mother, and her son remembers that when Joubert was convicted of the murders she favored him being sentenced to die in the electric chair. 

Twenty-five years after those boys were murdered, Shirlee Sherman was stabbed to death, in 2008, along with an 11-year-old boy, by a serial killer in Omaha. 

Speaking Wednesday in Lincoln, Jeff Sherman and his uncle Brad Waite, Shirlee's brother, said they won't be satisfied unless their mother's killer is handed the same fate as Joubert -- execution. 

Garcia was found guilty of four murders in Omaha a week ago. On Friday, a jury found that his murders satisfied at least three aggravating factors necessary for a death sentence: that he killed more than one person at the same time, killed to conceal his identity, and the killings were especially heinous and cruel and manifested exceptional depravity. 

Garcia was said to have killed Shirlee Sherman, Thomas Hunter and Roger and Mary Brumback to get revenge for being fired from Creighton University Medical Center by Thomas' dad, Dr. William Hunter, and Dr. Roger Brumback.

Waite said the murders were "extremely heinous." His sister and the boy suffered multiple stab wounds to their necks. The Brumbacks had multiple stab wounds and Roger Brumback was also shot multiple times. 

In the courtroom, Jeff Sherman sat where he could see Garcia, who showed no emotion, except to smile or smirk a few times, he said. 

It was not only a shock to get the news of his sister's death, Waite said, but then the family waited years for a suspect to be developed. During that time other people faced questioning by police and suspicion by family members, including accusations aimed at the boyfriend of Jeff Sherman's sister. 

Both men have always supported the death penalty, they said, because there are crimes so heinous and murderers who could never be rehabilitated. And the process to get to a death sentence is extensive, Waite said. 

"A life sentence is just not a suitable punishment," Jeff Sherman said. 

If the three-judge panel that must now decide Garcia's fate does not choose the death penalty, he said, he will not be satisfied that justice was done. 

"It'll leave a very strong knot in my stomach for a very, very long time," he said. 

It's not a matter of closure, Waite said. It's a matter of justice. 

"Somebody that's stabbed 18 times in their neck, how do you get closure to that?" he asked. "How can you forget that? This is something that will be in our minds forever. You can't take it out, no matter what happens to him."

Nebraska voters will be given the chance on Tuesday to retain or repeal the decision the Nebraska Legislature made in 2015 to eliminate the death penalty. Supporters of the death penalty got enough signatures on a referendum petition to put the question on the general election ballot. 

"People that are against the death penalty, I would like for them to sit in court with us and view the crime scene photos and the autopsy photos, then give me an explanation why this crime does not fit the death penalty," Waite said.



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