California Voters Decide To Uphold Death Penalty, Streamline The Process

Voters in California and Nebraska on Tuesday rejected efforts to abolish the death penalty in their states.

Despite Nebraska’s Tuesday vote, the US trend of moving away from the death penalty will continue, said Equal Justice USA Executive Director Shari Silberstein.

Nebraska voters reinstated the death penalty on Tuesday, reversing the Legislature’s decision past year to repeal capital punishment with a ballot campaign partially financed by Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts.

Prop. 66, sponsored by prosecutors, requires the state Supreme Court to rule on death penalty appeals within five years of sentencing, more than twice as fast as its current pace.

Bacon, a retired Air Force brigadier general, managed a squeaker of win, with barely more than 49 percent of the votes.

Tuesday’s election saw California approve recreational marijuana and reject a measure to ban capital punishment. At the same time, voters narrowly passed a second proposition to speed up the process of executing death row inmates. He said he couldn’t offer a timeline for when the state might move forward with executions “because there might be different variables that affect that timeline”.

Nebraska hasn’t executed an inmate since 1997, when it used an electric chair.

But the ballot measure to repeal the Senate’s anti-death penalty stand succeeded by a vote of about 61 percent, with almost 800,000 people voting.

Madison County Attorney Joseph Smith agreed.

Ritze is referring to a 2014 poll that showed almost three-fourths of Oklahomans support the death penalty. Nebraskans for the Death Penalty has also enlisted the support of local sheriffs who support the punishment.

In May 2015 in Nebraska, a historical law had banned the death penalty as a potentially sentences available to judges. Nebraskans for the Death Penalty raised $1.3 million for its effort but was outspent by a death penalty opposition group, which received almost $2.7 million.

A ballot measure that would limit how much California pays for prescription drugs for millions of residents appears headed for defeat but the pharmaceutical industry that bankrolled the opposition campaign isn’t ready to declare victory.

In the lead-up to the vote, law enforcement groups became the most vocal – and financially well-backed – group to publicly call for preservation of the death penalty.

Retain a Just Nebraska has turned to church leaders, particularly the Catholic Church, to present its arguments to voters. In 2007, the United Nations approved a nonbinding moratorium against the death penalty.

Two pro-death penalty legislators developed the ballot measure after a pair of botched executions in 2014 and 2015. According to a September report from the Pew Charitable Trusts, only 49 percent of Americans support the punishment, and 42 percent oppose it. The 24-year-old Heywood says she believes execution should be an option for those criminals who commit the most heinous crimes. As of 2016, 18 states and the District of Columbia have abolished the death penalty entirely.