Last week, Utah’s Senate cleared the way for using the firing squad when lethal-injection drugs are unavailable. This week, death penalty opponents urged Governor Gary Herbert to veto the bill. Herbert says he’s “leaning toward” signing. For more on methods of execution, including hanging and the gas chamber, see here.
In other news, Nebraska’s judiciary committee, in a unanimous 8-0 vote, cleared the way for consideration of death penalty repeal by the full legislature. Significantly, Nebraska’s repeal bill seeks to do what no other recent repeal has done—end the death penalty for those currently on death row as well as for future crimes. (In New Mexico and Connecticut, inmates on death row prior to repeal remain there post-repeal; in New Jersey, Illinois, and Maryland, governors commuted the sentences of those on death row.) The Nebraska bill states that, “In any criminal proceeding in which the death penalty has been imposed but not carried out prior to the effective date of this act, such penalty shall be changed to life imprisonment without possibility of parole.”