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.
The abolishment of the death penalty that Gov. Bill Richardson signed into law earlier this year takes effect Wednesday, the Associated Press reports.
But as writer Deborah Baker reminds us, the new law doesn’t mean executions are a thing of the past:
Two men are still on death row, their sentences untouched by the repeal and the governor unwilling to commute them. Two other potential death penalty cases are in the legal pipeline, awaiting trial.
Conceivably, the state could end up putting someone to death a decade or two after capital punishment was outlawed, given the drawn-out appeals typical in such cases.
Sitting next to Bishop Ricardo Ramirez, left, Gov. Bill Richardson announces his decision to repeal the death penalty earlier this year.
Richardson has said he favored the death penalty for Michael Paul Astorga, the Albuquerque man suspected of killing a Bernallillo County sheriff’s deputy in 2006.
Much will be made of this seeming inconsistency — the state has abolished the death penalty at the same time someone might be put to “death a decade or two after” death was outlawed as punishment for a crime.
Such a situation likely will provoke continued debate among supporters and opponents of the death penalty.
What I will remember for a long time, however, is the press conference where Richardson signed the abolition bill into law last March. The governor gave some of us in the media who attended the ceremony an unexpected glimpse into his private struggles over the rightness of his decision.
Here’s part of what I wrote then, as I reflected on the governor’s outward appearance:
At moments he appeared still to be working out the issue in his head and doubt occasionally crept in to darken his face.
Are there people who deserve the death penalty? Is it right for the state to execute a killer? What about the flaws in the system? And what of the United States’ general approval of the death penalty when compared to most Western democracies?
Richardson struggled to balance all those competing interests, but appeared unable to arrive at an absolutely satisfactory answer.
“I believe it’s the right decision. My conscience feels good, but I am still troubled,” Richardson said, by way of explaining his decision to repeal the death penalty.
He paused.
“I still wonder if… I know we did the right thing, but I am not totally, totally convinced that every argument that I have just said to you is accurate,” he said.
Let me be clear: I am not celebrating or critiquing which way the governor decided this issue, but rather the journey he appeared to have taken as he navigated compelling arguments for and against state-sanctioned executions.
The private struggle the governor experienced on whether to abolish the death penalty was a reminder that this issue, and others that wind up before lawmakers and the governor, oftentimes don’t give way to easy, pat answers. Instead they require a sorting through of many shades of gray rather than the simple choice between black and white.
And for that I was oddly heartened by the governor’s airing publicly his struggles. It paid respect to the seriousness of the issue.
