I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
SANTA FE — What appeared unlikely at the start of the 2009 legislative session — New Mexico abolishing the death penalty — seems closer to reality than it ever has.
Legislation that would repeal capital murder and replace it with life in prison without parole moves to the Senate floor, its next-to-last stop, following Monday afternoon’s 6-5 vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee to approve the bill.
And supporters expect the Senate to approve the legislation and send it on to Gov. Bill Richardson, who has not said whether he would sign the bill or not. But the governor has said publicly that his opposition to abolishing the death penalty has “softened.”
On Monday a Richardson’s spokesman said the governor is still studying the issue, and won’t make a decision until if and when the legislation gets to him: “Governor Richardson continues to weigh all sides of this issue. He will not take a position until a bill reaches his desk.”
Richardson’s signature would make New Mexico the 15th state in the nation to abolish the death penalty.
New Mexico’s move toward repealing capital punishment is part of a larger national trend, said Sam Milsap, a former district attorney from San Antonio, Texas, and who testified in support of the repeal Monday afternoon.
Milsap prosecuted a man in the 1980s, Ruben Cantu, later executed in 1993. A witness in the original case has since recanted testimony, throwing doubt on Cantu’s guilt.
“What is driving this debate is not this old liberal argument is that it’s wrong to kill people for killing people,” Milsap said. “The fact that we know the system is not perfect. I have no problem with the state killing people for killing people if I was certain we could get it right 100 percent of the time.”
About 130 people in 26 states have been exonerated since the early 1970s, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. That number includes four people from New Mexico.
Milsap added that another factor driving other states to consider abolishing the death penalty is the cost of prosecuting capital murder. Appeals over a several-year period often drive up the costs, say death penalty opponents. The dollars-and-cents argument comes at a time when the economy is in a shambles and many states are struggling to balance their budgets, including New Mexico.
New Mexico has executed one prisoner since 1976 — Terry Clark in 2001.
Monday’s vote by the Senate Judiciary Committee provoked applause from supporters and came after an hour-long debate in which supporters and opponents of the death penalty made arguments familiar to anyone who has followed the debate.
The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Gail Chasey, D-Albuquerque, opened her presentation to the committee by saying, “We are not excusing terrible violence murders by any means. We believe that society should be protected.”
She then explained that what the legislation would do is to replace the death penalty with life in prison without parole.
Death penalty repeal supporter Michelle Giger said she lost her father to murder but said that capital murder trials make victims remember how our loved ones died. All she wanted “is to remember him and how he (her father) lived.”
But Lemuel Martinez, the district attorney for the 13th District, said the death penalty is a deterrent regardless of what opponents say.
“It prevents people from committing murder,” Martinez said.
He also said the cost argument against the death penalty is a misleading one because “we will continue to pay defense attorneys who will try to get people off life without parole.”
The lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee also debated the bill.
“We are not Texas,” Sen. Richard Martinez, D-Española, said, comparing Texas’ execution rate to that of New Mexico’s. Texas has executed more than 400 people since 1976. New Mexico has executed Clark.
“I’m sorry,” Sen. Martinez said. “By enacting this law we will be doing an injustice to our people.”
But Senate Majority Leader Michael Sanchez, D-Belen, a criminal defense attorney, said that the state couldn’t take chances with the death penalty.
Sanchez said he didn’t agree with supporters of the death penalty that “If you get it right 90 percent of the time, that’s good enough. That is not good enough.”
