Nebraska bans death penalty

In a climactic political showdown, Nebraska’s lawmakers overrode a veto and banned the death penalty Wednesday.

The ban passed by the thinnest of margins, making Nebraska the first conservative-dominated Legislature to outlaw the death-penalty since North Dakota in 1973.

The landmark vote comes as the use of capital punishment, while still favored by a majority of Americans, has gone into general decline and received increased scrutiny across the U.S. Nebraska hadn’t carried out an execution since 1997.

Nebraska’s single-chamber Legislature needed 30 votes to override Republican Gov. Pete Rickett’s veto of the ban Tuesday, which he had announced while flanked by law enforcement officials and by a murder victim’s family.

Thirty votes are what they got, with anti-death penalty conservatives and liberals unifying for a 30-19 vote that brought applause to the chamber when the deciding vote rolled in.

Ricketts didn’t hide his disgust.

“My words cannot express how appalled I am that we have lost a critical tool to protect law enforcement and Nebraska families,” Ricketts said in a statement after the vote.

The passage marks a crowning career achievement for Sen. Ernie Chambers, an iconoclastic lawmaker who once sued God and goaded fellow lawmakers into making Nebraska the first U.S. state to divest funds from apartheid South Africa. He has doggedly pursued a death penalty ban for decades.

Nebraska has long had an abolitionist streak, voting to ban executions in 1979, only to see a governor veto the effort; the same happened with a temporary moratorium in 1999. A 2007 attempt failed by one vote.

This year, the deciding vote was preceded by months of personal testimony, scientific citation, internal reflection, public denunciation, lobbying, filibustering, and, most notably, pitched debate over the sanctity of life and the true meaning of the Holy Bible.

Death penalty opponents across the country hailed the vote, hoping the ban could be a portent of things to come.

“Today marks a remarkable and historic victory for our state,” ACLU of Nebraska Executive Director Danielle Conrad said in a statement, adding: “The Nebraska Legislature, with the world watching, made their voice a part of the national conversation. We are a nation that is turning away from the death penalty. This victory stands as a testament to what can happen in our sister states.”