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Opponents of death penalty call for review
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THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
CARSON CITY -- A report showing a decline in the number of death penalty cases nationwide underscores the need for a capital punishment cost assessment in the Silver State, Nevada death penalty opponents said Thursday.
Such an assessment was approved by legislators but was vetoed by Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, there were 43 executions nationwide this year and 46 in 2010 -- down from 98 in 1999. The group also said that new death sentences in the United States have declined 75 percent from their peak since executions resumed in the 1970s.
But while other states have ended the death penalty or seen a drop in new capital punishment sentences, the Nevada Coalition Against the Death Penalty said, the number of death sentences issued in the state has risen.
Four death sentences were imposed in Nevada last year, after a decade that saw only one or two a year, the coalition said.
"While many other states in the country are recognizing that the death penalty is inefficient and ineffective, Nevadans are asking why we aren't assessing the costs of this bad public policy to our state," said Eryn Jane Branch, the coalition's executive director.
Death penalty foes think more people would favor sentences of life in prison without the possibility of parole as an alternative to execution if they knew how much capital case trials and often decades of appeals cost taxpayers.
The last Nevada execution was in April 2006, when Daryl Mack was executed by lethal injection for raping and murdering a woman in 1988.
Mack had said he would rather be executed than spend the rest of his life in prison. He said he didn't strangle Betty Jane May, 55, in the Reno boarding house where she lived.
Mack was serving a life sentence in prison for murdering Kim Parks in 1994 in a Reno motel when he was linked to May's murder. He was the first Nevada convict to be sentenced to death based solely on DNA evidence.
Nevada now has 83 inmates on death row, but there are no imminent executions.
The state's death chamber is in the aging Nevada State Prison, which is slated to close early next year. Parts of the prison date to the 1860s. Department of Corrections officials have said the chamber could be used if an execution were to occur.
A bill considered in this year's legislative session sought a temporary moratorium on executions while a cost analysis of death penalty cases was conducted by legislative auditors. AB501 was passed after the moratorium provision was scrapped, but Sandoval vetoed the bill.
In his veto message, the governor said the bill lacked "the specificity necessary to persuade me that the outcome of the audit performed will be fair."
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bghs1986 the only reason the death penalty is both ineffective and extraordinarily costly is because of libbys like you and mrs ed. you want to let them appeal after appeal. we need to do it like Texas!!!
I would accept a 'No Death Penalty' policy provided those convicted of a heinous crime were sentenced to 1) life without possible parole; and 2) life meant imprisonment at hard labor (16 hours per day) for life. I would define hard labor as vigorous, strenuous work like breaking big rocks into smaller and smaller rocks, ad infinitum. No exercise gym, no unlimited TV, no frills just hard laborous work 16 hours per day.
The problem I see with the death penalty is how many times we get it wrong. Since 1973 more then a hundred people have been exonerated off of this nations death rows, many of them by random chance. We have no way to know how many innocent people have been executed or are still on death row But for pure luck, many of those who were exonerated would have been executed, and there would be people in this forum saying that it served them right.
How come liberals don't believe in the death penalty for people like Charles Manson or Ted Bundy but they won't hesitate to abort a fetus? Just goes to show you how insane these hypocrites are.
Jack....I will certainly pay for yours.
death penalty is late term abortion ?
Jesus believed in the death penalty.
Those who think the death penalty is ineffective are wrong. Those that are given that sentence and when it is finally carried out, will never, ever harm another human being. The death penalty isn't the problem, it's the useless laws in place that prevent the authorities from carrying it out in a timely manner. We, the people need to change that.
I always find it interesting that those who oppose the death penalty rarely have a personal story to tell about someone in their family being raped, molested and then murdered or someone being killed in a horrendous way. Until that day comes, at it surely will, stop the protests and talk to the families of these victims. Get the cops to show you some of these monsters handiwork. You will probably stop these protests immediately. What we should be protesting, as taxpayers, the many years these miscreants stay alive on our dollar. No death penalty should go beyond 5 years. During that time we should set up special courts to hear only death penalty appeals, allow all criminals to have a DNA test and if there is any suspicion of wrong doing by cops, da's, labs, witnesses, take them off death row and give them new trials but for goodness sake, stop this life sentence for these death penalty inmates and put them to the death they so richly deserve in a timely manner.
GEORGE said: "What this state needs is someone with the balls to carry out the death penalty, not bleeding heart liberals trying to abolish it."..... The problem George is that the Governor is a conservative Republican so he apparently does not have any more "balls" than a bleeding heart liberal you talk about.