LINCOLN-- State senators will be faced with yet another historic vote Wednesday afternoon: whether or not to uphold their original vote on LB 268 and override the governor's veto of the bill repealing the death penalty in Nebraska.
Gov. Pete Ricketts officially vetoed LB 268, originally introduced by Sen. Ernie Chambers of Omaha, Tuesday afternoon.
"Repealing the death penalty sends the wrong message to Nebraskans who overwhelming support capital punishment and look to government to strengthen public safety, not weaken it," Ricketts said.
A statement released by the governor's office also states, "The bill also attempts to repeal the sentences of convicted murderers currently sitting on death row." However such language is not included anywhere in the bill.
The Attorney General's office confirmed in an email last week, "The Legislature has no authority to repeal current death sentences; those in place remain in effect, even if the death penalty is repealed."
Attorney General Doug Peterson is also an advocate for the death penalty and has said it should be reserved for the worst of the worst.
The governor's office has been accused of engaging in political stunts throughout the entirety of the death penalty debate.
Most recently, the governor's office and the Nebraska Corrections Director Scott Frakes announced their purchase of the drugs needed to carry out a lethal injection the evening before one of the final floor debates. The drugs are among those that the state has had difficulty acquiring for several years, leaving the current death row inmates without an execution date.
"What they wanted to do, since they obviously have been engaged in this kind of back and forth for a long period of time, was to have something the day before we debated the death penalty to try and drop into the mix," Chambers said last week in an interview with the Nebraska News Service.
There are currently 10 individuals on death row in Nebraska--one less than what was discussed throughout the majority of the legislative session. Michael Ryan, a convicted cult killer, died of natural causes over the weekend in the Tecumseh State Correctional Institution. Ryan had been on death row for three decades.
Nebraska has not executed anybody since the electric chair was deemed "cruel and unusual" by the Supreme Court in 1997.
The state paid more than $50,000 for the lethal injection drugs to HarrisPharma, a pharmaceutical manufacturer and distributor based in Kolkata, India. Frakes said the drugs are expected to arrive this summer.
The vote is expected to take place at 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday. The bill passed in the Unicameral with 32 votes; the override vote needs 30 votes to pass. If the override passes, Nebraska will be the first conservative state to repeal the death penalty. The last state to repeal the death penalty was Maryland in 2013.
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Contact Sophie Tatum at nns.statum@gmail.com