Nebraska’s death penalty is to stay on the books until voters decide next year whether to keep it, the state’s top election official announced on Friday.
Nebraska Secretary of State John Gale said death penalty supporters have gathered enough valid signatures to prevent a law repealing capital punishment from going into effect until the US presidential election in November next year.
Nebraska lawmakers abolished the death penalty in May, prompting a petition drive for a ballot measure to overturn their decision. The issue had already qualified for the ballot, but Friday’s announcement confirms that the petition drive also succeeded in postponing the repeal.
The group Nebraskans for the Death Penalty said it plans to begin a “Repeal the Repeal” campaign, urging voters to keep capital punishment.
Campaign leaders are to “work to ensure that Nebraska voters have their voice heard on this important criminal justice issue,” spokesman Chris Peterson said.
A spokesman for the anti-death penalty group Nebraskans for Public Safety said it would continue its outreach efforts to voters.
“Nebraska voters will have the same opportunity the legislature did to have a thoughtful discussion on whether to bring back a failed system that has not been used in nearly two decades, is not a deterrent and is a waste of taxpayer [US] dollars,” spokesman Dan Parsons said.
Nebraska has not executed an inmate since 1997, and the state currently lacks two of the three drugs in its protocol.
The US Department of Correctional Services spent more than US$54,000 to buy the drugs from a supplier in India, but the US Food and Drug Administration has said they cannot be legally imported.
Nebraska has 10 men on death row.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing
RSS