The legislature doesn’t want capital punishment, the executive branch can’t obtain execution drugs, and
Nebraska prosecutors have moved forward this year with the pandemic-delayed capital sentencing trials of two defendants separately convicted of a murder out of a voyeuristic true-crime novel. The state, writes Associated Press reporter Grant Schulte in a May 9, 2021 analysis, is “still wedded to the idea of executing prisoners, just not the practical part of doing it” and appears “caught in a law vs. reality netherworld.”
Three defendants have been sentenced to death in Nebraska since
Governor Pete Rickets bankrolled a 2016 voter referendum that prevented the legislature’s repeal of the state’s death penalty the year before from going into effect. Two more