Two senior Nevada legislators are drafting a bill that would end the state’s death penalty in the latest effort to block capital punishment in mainly Democratic-led states.
Assemblyman James Ohrenschall (D), the second-ranking Democrat on the Assembly’s Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Tick Segerblom (D), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, have formally requested legislative language ending the death penalty. Under their bill, the maximum punishment available to a convicted criminal would be a life sentence without the possibility of parole.
Nevada has not executed a prisoner since 2006, but 81 people, all men, sit on death row at Ely State Prison in rural White Pine County.
There are no executions on the horizon, either: Nevada is among the states that has been unable to obtain the drugs necessary to perform a lethal injection since pharmaceutical companies began limiting access. State officials sought new drugs in September, but no pharmaceutical companies responded.
Ohrenschall, a longtime opponent of capital punishment, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal he would pursue a legislative path rather than trying to change the state’s constitution, a more drawn-out process that would require a ballot measure in 2020.
{mosads}Gov. Brian Sandoval (R) has not said whether he would sign or veto a death penalty repeal. But Sandoval said on his campaign website in 2010 he backed the death penalty for “the worst crimes.”
Nevada would join 19 other states and the District of Columbia in eliminating the death penalty by law. Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico and New York legislators have all ended capital punishment in the last decade, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. All seven states were controlled by Democrats when they voted to end capital punishment.
Nebraska, which has an ostensibly nonpartisan, unicameral legislature that in practice is controlled by Republicans, voted to end the death penalty in 2015. But in November, 60 percent of voters backed a state referendum that overturned the law and reinstated the death penalty.
Democratic governors in four other states — Colorado, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Washington — have issued executive orders halting the death penalty, though those laws remain on the books.
The application of capital punishment has fallen dramatically in the last two decades. In 1998, 98 inmates were put to death. That number has declined almost every year since, with just 28 inmates put to death in 2015. So far this year, the death penalty has been implemented 20 times, and no more executions are scheduled before the end of the year, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Nevada has executed 12 prisoners since the Supreme Court allowed the death penalty again in 1977.