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Wisconsin GOP wants to bring death penalty back.

Posted on Thursday, December 12 @ 08:14:01 GMT by just_dave

Wisconsin has had a ban on the death penalty for 150 years, which is far longer then most individual countries have had the practice baned. But that could soon change as a new Republican-controlled Legislature wants Wisconsin's Capitol to reconsider an emotional topic next year: the state's 150-year ban on the death penalty.

Recalling the Washington-area sniper shootings and new world disorder since Sept. 11, 2001, state Senate President-elect Alan Lasee (R-De Pere) says he will introduce a bill to establish a death penalty by lethal injection "only for the hard-core cases, where a judge and jury decide that is the proper punishment."

Lasee said he will wait until the state's billion-dollar budget deficit is solved next year to push his bill. But he won't wait long, he said.

"It's important; I will not back away from it," Lasee said. "Thirty-eight states now have it. It begs the question: Why not Wisconsin?"

border="0" src="http://graphics.jsonline.com/graphics/news/img/dec02/DEATH12G.jpg" width="340" height="385">

John Huebscher, executive director of the Wisconsin Catholic Conference, responded to Lasee's question by saying the threat of terrorism is no reason to establish the death penalty.

"I don't think we respond to the horrors of Sept. 11 with more violence," Huebscher said. If a death penalty becomes new law, he said, "then Osama Bin Laden has already won."

Momentum for the death penalty was provided by Republicans gaining control of the Senate, as well as the Assembly, after last month's elections. Republicans will control the Senate, 18-15, and the Assembly, 58-41. The Senate's three new Republicans said they could support a death penalty, depending on the bill's specifics.

The debate might drive a wedge between Republicans and Democratic Governor-elect Jim Doyle, who has consistently opposed the death penalty. Doyle could veto any bill passed by the Legislature reinstating the death penalty.

"I'm against the death penalty. I believe in life without parole, I think that's the best for Wisconsin," he said Wednesday.

But Doyle could not block a tactical move planned by one legislative leader, who wants a statewide advisory referendum on the issue. That would let voters tell lawmakers whether the death penalty option should be available.

If both the Assembly and Senate call for an advisory referendum, it would be held. The death penalty still could not become law without the signature of Doyle or a future governor, unless the Legislature can override his veto.

"The time is right to have an advisory referendum," said Rep. Dean Kaufert (R-Neenah), co-chairman of the Legislature's Joint Finance Committee.

Public support strong
In the last statewide public poll on the issue, taken by the St. Norbert College Survey Center in spring 2000, about two out of three respondents favored the death penalty.

Diane Lutz, who has pushed in Madison for the death penalty, said memories of the spring day in 1994 when her husband, Waukesha Police Capt. James Lutz, was murdered by bank robbers will "never go away."

The death penalty "would be a strong deterrent to those who wish to take a life," she said. "If the people wish it, then the people should have that as an alternative."

Wisconsin banned the death penalty in 1853, two years after the public hanging of a Kenosha man, John McCaffrey, who drowned his wife. A crowd estimated at more than 3,000 witnessed the July 1851 execution. During the hanging, McCaffrey struggled for about five minutes with the noose around his neck and remained alive for another 10 minutes. The way he died spurred the push to repeal the death penalty, and two years later, the state Legislature outlawed capital punishment.

Unanswered questions
Lasee would not go into details of his proposal, saying the bill hasn't been written yet and he didn't know exactly what it would have to include to get 17 votes in the Senate.

In debating the measure, legislators would need to consider whether the bill required someone to kill more than one person to be executed, what role DNA tests would play in death penalty cases, how murderers of children would be treated, whether capital punishment could be applied to juvenile or mentally disabled criminals, and whether someone who kills a police officer or prison guard should be executed.

If at least one house of the Legislature doesn't vote on a death penalty bill or referendum question by the end of 2003, the issue would probably be dead until 2005. Traditionally, non-spending bills die if they have not cleared one house in the first year of a two-year session.

Sen. Fred Risser (D-Madison) would lead opposition to Lasee's bill, throwing parliamentary motion after motion at it to slow and kill it.

"There is no showing that the death penalty acts as deterrent," Risser said. "There is no evidence that imposition of a death penalty will make for a safer, saner community.

"Mistakes will happen."

Concerns about mistakes led neighboring Illinois - the only upper Midwest state with a death penalty - to impose a moratorium on executions. The outgoing and incoming governors said they can't be sure that innocent people aren't on death row.

One of those people was Anthony Porter, who spent 15 years on death row and once came within two days of being executed before a group of journalism students proved his innocence. Porter was released from prison in 1999 after a Milwaukee man, Alstory Simon, confessed to the 1982 murders that Porter had been convicted of.

Church groups, the American Civil Liberties Union and other organizations are preparing to fight any death penalty bill, just as they did in 1995 - the Capitol's last full debate on the issue.

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Re: Wisconsin GOP wants to bring death penalty back. (Score: 1)
by TheTaxMan (chooseapathy@hotmail.com) on Thursday, December 12 @ 08:25:58 GMT
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I thought the death penalty was already supposed to be, "only for the hard-core cases, where a judge and jury decide that is the proper punishment." Good thing I lived in TX for 9 years (and now FL) to know that is such a lie.

I promise, People of Wisconsin, I'll only kill the really really really bad people. Like The Sniper in MA! Yeah! I'll kill him really good for you :)

There's a reason the people got rid of it in the first place, and I'm pretty sure it's not so they could bring it back in a few decades.