Nebraska May Overturn its Death Penalty Ban

Nebraska May Overturn its Death Penalty Ban

Hemant Mehta (http://www.friendlyatheist.com, http://www.patreon.com/Hemant , https://www.facebook.com/friendlyatheist)
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/09/07/trial-by-fire

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/17/us/politics/nebraska-to-vote-on-abolishing-death-penalty-after-petition-drive-succeeds.html

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Let's talk really briefly about all the problems with the death penalty.

First and foremost, there have been cases where innocent people may have died. If you haven't read David Grann's amazing New Yorker piece about Cameron Todd Willingham, do it. There's a link below.

It also costs a lot of money to kill people. When you think about all the lawyers and jurors and paperwork that has to be done, it's actually cheaper to keep someone behind bars for life without parole.

And what does it really accomplish? Someone who did something awful, took the lives of other people, suffers for a few seconds and then it's over? It doesn't bring anyone back. If you really want them to pay for their mistake, it seems harsher to keep them alive and behind bars so they can think about what they did.

It's also just plain immoral. What sort of people are we that we would kill people as an act of revenge? We expect that in Saudi Arabia, not here.

The death penalty is disproportionately used against people of color and the mentally ill. We don't even have the right drugs anymore. States are trying to import them from other countries because companies here won't supply them anymore.

If you think about it rationally, which I hope you all would, the death penalty is just a bad idea.

For all these reasons, they've been trying to overturn it in Nebraska. In fact, that fight has been led for decades by State Senator Ernie Chamber, who also happens to be the highest-ranking openly-atheist politician in the country.

He had filed a bill to ban the death penalty 37 times -- he's been in office that long -- and it never got anywhere. The one time it did, in 1979, the governor vetoed it.

But you know what? This year, he finally made it happen. Even though Governor Pete Ricketts threatened a veto, Chambers managed to get enough support in the legislature to override the governor. It was a huge victory.

But now, enough blood-thirsty people in Nebraska have signed a petition to put the death penalty back on the ballot next year. They want to reinstate it.

I can't stress enough how bad of an idea this is. I thought Nebraska was better than this. The irrational state is supposed to be its neighbor to the south. And yet, this ballot measure already has a lot of support.

I guess, for a lot of Christians in the state, this is what it means to be pro-life.

If you live there, please be vocal about this and urge everyone you know to keep the death penalty ban in place.
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