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McCook Gazette

Senator discusses DNA, death penalty

Thursday, January 29, 2009

LINCOLN -- Dist. 44 Sen. Mark Christensen anticipates a packed house today for the Judiciary hearing of two bills concerning the death penalty.

LB 36 will change the method of the death penalty to lethal injection, a proposal Christensen said he favors. LB 306 would repeal the death penalty and replace it with life imprisonment without possibility of parole.

Christensen said at the legislative conference call this morning at the McCook Area of Commerce office that he is in favor of the death penalty, if there is DNA evidence to back up the crime.

Currently, there is no one on death row without DNA proof, he said.

But mandating DNA evidence could be difficult if there is none collected, countered McCook City Police Chief Ike Brown.

Brown said he supported another bill introduced this year, that would mandate fingerprints of all convicted felons to be registered on a statewide data base.

Christensen agreed some kind of compensation is due to those wrongly imprisoned and later exonerated because of DNA evidence, but he was not certain at this point what that would be.

A lump sum of money may be spent too quickly, he said and would not best serve the exonerated. Instead, he said he favored monthly payments and free education at state colleges.

But for those who are elderly and getting out of prison, education may not be an option. Whether a lump sum, monthly payments or education, there is no easy answer concerning compensation for those wrongly imprisoned, he believed.

"There is no one-size-fits-all," Christensen concluded.

Christensen also discussed another bill he has proposed, LB 651. The bill would move forward if the Nebraska Court of Appeals upholds the taxing authority in LB 701.

If LB 701 is upheld, property tax money collected under it will go to fund the Water Resources Revolving Loan Fund. The fund will be used by natural resources districts to borrow money to bond for projects.

If the Nebraska Court of Appeals agrees with the district court ruling that the law is unconstitutional, the Republican River Basin natural resources districts will have to come up with another way to pay back the almost $9 million the districts borrowed from the state in 2008.

The NRDs have until 2013 to pay back these funds, used to pay irrigators for water the districts purchased in 2007. The water was used to help the state comply with the Republican River Basin Compact.

According to Christensen, he's heard talk that an eastern senator would favor the NRDs pay back the $9 million by assessing property taxes at 15 cents per $100 valuation for five years, for those in the Republican River Basin. But Christensen said he doubted that proposal would get through the Legislature.

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  • First of all, regardless of the method used to put a condemned man to death, it has to be used, which is something that the state of Nebraska doesnt seem to understand. I know of several death row inmates that have been sitting on death row since the 70's. I have personally read the files of most of them, these people are animals, and they are costing the tax payers far too much money. If there is a confession or DNA evidence, I think they should be allowed 1 appeal, if they lose the appeal they should be executed withing 30 days. Why would we switch methods of execution anyway? Once sparky delivers the first jolt, the pain is pretty much over. That is much better than the victims of these people got. There are already several murderers housed at Tecumseh that got life, or a rediculous number of years; these people are never getting out and the tax payer has to pay for thier care, including medical. Why dont we make the family of these people pay the state for the care of these criminals? Execute them already!! Maybe all the saints that are against the death penalty should pay the 40K a year that it takes to house and feed and supply all of the things required to take care of a death row inmate. It would be very nice to keep our hands clean and never have to make the choice to execute another human being, but most of the inmates on death row are not locked up for the first time, most of them are working on a 2nd and 3rd number, we have to cut our losses somewhere.

    I also think it is appropriate to compensate a person that has been incarcerated and exonerated. They need to compensate these people in a fashion chosen by the exonerated person. The state can not destroy a persons life and expect to be able to choose the method they want to put the record straight. I think if the state or county incarcerates and individual awaiting trial for a crime, if they do not have the evidence to get a conviction, the state or county should have to compensate the accused for damages. The accused person probably lost a job, fell behind on payments, etc. they need to be compensated. Innocent until proven guilty is the way it is supposed to be, if you cant prove them guilty, that means you incarcerated an innocent person and there was really no grounds for incarceration.

    -- Posted by seentoomuch on Thu, Jan 29, 2009, at 2:26 PM
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