Missouri and Kansas should follow Nebraska’s brave move to end death penalty

Thanks to a courageous move by its conservative Legislature, Nebraska will no longer shoulder the emotional and fiscal costs of a death penalty.

Lawmakers overrode a veto by their Republican governor, Pete Ricketts, meaning a bill to abolish capital punishment is now law. The reversal of a death penalty law in a conservative Midwestern state is a victory on moral and practical grounds. It ought to provide inspiration for Missouri and Kansas to also end state-sponsored executions.

Years of studies have shown that the threat of capital punishment does not deter the most heinous crimes. Research is also clear that the cost of litigating and carrying out death sentences is greater than having criminals serve life in prison. Racial bias continues to play a role in sentencings.

Executions have become more difficult and expensive in recent years. Many drug manufacturers have balked at making their products available for that purpose. Missouri has resorted to making a secret deal with a compounding pharmacy whose identity remains hidden, making the business of executions in the state all the more reprehensible.

The arrangement with the pharmacy enabled Missouri to carry out a record 10 executions in 2014, tied with Texas as the most in the nation. Three persons have been executed so far in 2015.

A 2012 American Bar Association report found numerous flaws in Missouri’s application of its death penalty statutes. They included an inadequate protocol for witness identification and a severely underfunded public defender system.

State leaders, including Gov. Jay Nixon, Attorney General Chris Koster and lawmakers, never made any serious attempts to correct the problems noted in the report. Instead, they accelerated the pace of executions.

Kansas has several inmates on death row, but the state has not carried out an execution in 50 years. Some lawmakers have proposed eliminating capital punishment because of the expense of litigation and the higher cost of holding prisoners in administrative segregation. There has not been a serious legislative debate about the death penalty, however.

Nebraska was fortunate to have a lawmaker, Ernie Chambers, who made abolition of the death penalty a sustained cause. Eventually, conservatives rallied to the side of Chambers, the state’s first black legislator.

Their reasons were different; Chambers recognized the moral and racial flaws of capital punishment, while conservatives balked at the expensive government apparatus required to kill people.

But the end result was brave and good. Missouri and Kansas need leaders to step up and urge a stop to state-sponsored executions.

This story was originally published June 1, 2015 at 4:26 PM with the headline "Missouri and Kansas should follow Nebraska’s brave move to end death penalty."