Osler's Razor

In a move that surprised many people (including me), Nebraska became the seventh state in the last decade to get rid of the death penalty (joining New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Connecticut, New Mexico, and Maryland).

Intriguingly, Nebraska's unicameral legislature overrode the Governor's veto to complete the job. Some of the legislators cited their Christian faith as a reason for their vote against capital punishment.

Much has been made of the fact that Nebraska is a conservative state, and the first one to rid itself of the death penalty since 1973, when North Dakota made that choice.  However, there are other conservative states that don't have the death penalty.  For example, a few years ago I spoke in Alaska on this subject. Alaska has not had the death penalty since statehood began, and there seems to be little movement now towards embracing it. The fact is that for a less-populated state like Nebraska or Alaska, the mechanisms required by capital punishment-- legal and institutional-- are particularly expensive because the penalty is rarely used.

In urging the legislature to sustain his veto, Governor Pete Ricketts cited a 2002 bank robbery/murder. That kind of argument always seems odd to me; after all, the presence of the death penalty didn't deter those murders.

Even though I obviously have a position on this issue, I acknowledge that there are principled arguments on both sides of the question of capital punishment. I do know that American law and opinion is evolving on this issue, and I'm very glad to see that.