Death penalty update - this will be fairly long. Today the judiciary committee looked at 2 bills that involve the death penalty. One had to do with method of execution and the other would repeal the death penalty in Wyoming. First some background information on why this came up: Under Wyoming law the state has to use a certain chemical compound for executions. Apparently the specific compound is only available from one source and that source has decided that they are opposed to the death penalty and will no longer sell the chemical compound to governments who use it for execution (I believe the company that produces it is in Europe). So Wyoming now has a dilemma - if a court orders someone on death row is to be executed (right now Wyoming only has 1 inmate on death row), the state cannot legally execute him since we do not have the means of obtaining the chemical compound that we are required to use. That dilemma caused Sen. Burns to introduce a bill that would have allowed for firing squads to be used as a backup method of execution in the case that the chemical compound is unavailable. This bill failed last session, but was picked up as an interim topic. This also caused some discussion that we should look at repealing the death penalty, so the committee agreed to expand the topic of death penalty to look at both options. The first bill that would allow for firing squads to be used if the chemical compound is not available passed the committee and will be a committee sponsored bill going into the next session. I voted for it because I believe if we have a statute for the death penalty we need a way to carry it out. The second bill would have repealed the death penalty. There are a lot of valid concerns about the death penalty- it is ridiculous that executing someone ends up costing the state a lot more than keeping that person in prison for life. Executing the wrong person is a mistake that cant be corrected, so I believe that we need to be hesitant when choosing to execute someone. That being said, I do believe that some crimes are so heinous that the death penalty is appropriate. Wyoming tends to execute someone approximately every 30 years, so I dont believe that the death penalty is being overused. So I voted against repealing the death penalty. The bill had enough votes to pass the house committee, but a majority of senators voted against it. Judiciary committee rules state that in order to be a committee sponsored bill it requires a majority of house members and a majority of senators (some committees only require a majority of the entire joint committee). So the bill to repeal the death penalty will not be a committee sponsored bill. And individual legislator can still choose to introduce the bill in the upcoming session.
Posted on: Fri, 12 Sep 2014 16:22:43 +0000
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