"How expensive is the death penalty?" is the title of Paul Hammel's report in today's Omaha World-Herald.
State lawmakers easily defeated a proposal Wednesday that would have provided an answer to a much-debated question: How much does it cost Nebraska to have a death penalty?
On a 30-15 vote, state senators shot down a proposal by Omaha Sen. Brenda Council to have the State Auditor’s Office study how much money is spent prosecuting and appealing death penalty cases, as well as the potential savings of repealing capital punishment.
Council said Nebraska has never arrived at an accurate accounting of its death penalty costs. In neighboring Kansas, death penalty prosecutions were found to cost 16 times as much as cases resulting in sentences of life imprisonment.
“The public needs to know,” Council said, particularly when the state is short of money for effective crime-fighting tools.
Opponents criticized the study idea, saying that it should have been introduced as a separate bill rather than as a last-minute amendment and that a study wouldn’t change minds in the Legislature, which, by all measures, remains staunchly pro-death penalty.
“It just plain won’t matter,” said Sen. Scott Lautenbaugh of Omaha, a capital punishment supporter.
Last year, lawmakers voted 34-12 to change the state’s mode of execution from electrocution to lethal injection. Wednesday’s vote on Council’s study amendment gave no hint that any minds have changed since then.
Senators began debating Council’s proposal to repeal the death penalty, Legislative Bill 306, on Wednesday morning — and debate will resume on that bill this morning.
But with little chance of passing a repeal measure, Council offered the study proposal as an alternative, saying it would show Nebraskans the monetary costs of the death penalty.
And:
Council argued that the death penalty has been applied unfairly, carries the risk of executing innocent people and is an ineffective deterrent to crime.
She cited a 2009 “Smart on Crime” survey of 500 police chiefs across the country, in which capital punishment was rated the least-efficient use of taxpayer funds to fight crime.
Sen. Danielle Conrad of Lincoln said that there are more effective ways to deter crime and that money should be used for them.
The State Patrol, for instance, is at its lowest staffing level since 1985-86, Conrad said, and its crime lab has lost employees because the state can’t pay competitive wages.
Council said that in Omaha last year, the number of homicides fell to 29 from 44 in 2008. The main reason wasn’t the death penalty, she said, but stronger community-based efforts to head off retaliatory killings.
Jo Anne Young writes, "Amendment to explore death penalty costs fails," for the Lincoln Journal Star.
Nebraska state senators on Wednesday resoundingly turned down a proposal by Omaha Sen. Brenda Council to determine the costs of carrying out the death penalty in the state.
Senators had opened the day debating repeal of the death penalty with a bill (LB306) that would substitute a sentence of life without the possibility of parole. In that debate, proponents talked about the need to know the costs of death penalty cases to Nebraska taxpayers.
Other states had figured out the costs, Council said. Nebraskans should know, too.
Kansas, for example, found the median cost for death penalty cases, through execution, was $1.26 million. The median cost for non-death penalty cases through the end of incarceration was $740,000.
It found investigation costs were three times higher for death penalty cases; trial costs 16 times greater, partly because of the length of trial; and appeal costs were 21 times greater.
The Kansas report stressed that actual cost figures for those cases in that state don't exist. No cases have completed the appeals process and resulted in executions.
A little more than 90 minutes into the repeal debate Wednesday, Council filed a replacement amendment to direct State Auditor Mike Foley to find and report on those costs.
Today's Fremont Tribune carries the AP report by Nate Jenkins, "Neb. lawmakers nix request for death-penalty info."
Nebraska lawmakers on Wednesday rejected a request for a study into the cost of carrying out the death penalty _ a decision that could ease the transition from the electric chair to lethal injection.
Lacking support for a vote to repeal the death penalty altogether, death-penalty opponents quickly switched the debate to whether the state auditor should compile a comprehensive report of the penalty's costs.
The Legislature is not expected to vote on a measure to repeal the death penalty this year.
And:
While 11 people are on Nebraska's death row, experts have said they don't expect an execution in the state for several years.
Nebraska's last execution was in 1997.
Earlier coverage from Nebraska begins with this post.
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