An Execution in Nebraska

[0] From the New York Times, I'm Michael Barbarro.

[1] This is the day.

[2] After a 40 -year crusade, a lawmaker in Nebraska succeeded in outlawing the death penalty.

[3] So why did Nebraska just execute a prison?

[4] It's Wednesday, August 29.

[5] Hello.

[6] Hello.

[7] Hi, is this Senator Chambers?

[8] Who would it be other than Senator Chambers?

[9] Good question.

[10] Okay.

[11] This is Michael Barbaro from the New York Times.

[12] Glad to talk to you.

[13] you.

[14] Tell me a bit about your district and when you started representing it.

[15] My district is primarily black.

[16] It's located in the heart of North Omaha.

[17] I ran for this office and achieved election around 1972.

[18] So I've been in office so far a total of 44 years.

[19] Wow.

[20] That's longer than I'd be sentenced for robbing a bank.

[21] And I think it's been harder here than it might have been in prison.

[22] State Senator Ernie Chambers, he's an institution in Nebraska politics.

[23] He is the longest serving member of the Nebraska legislature, and often one of one or two African Americans in that body.

[24] Mitch Smith is a national reporter for the Times.

[25] He is known for being savvy, for being powerful, and for being outspoken sometimes in ways that create controversy.

[26] He has this lyrical style of speaking.

[27] I live inside of my mind, inside of my psyche, inside of my world, and my mantra comes from the greatest philosopher slash thinker America ever produced.

[28] That's Popeye the Sailor Man. That mantra, I am what I am.

[29] That's all that I am.

[30] He's called the governor evil.

[31] He's called Republicans, Republicans.

[32] He has said something to the effect of the police or my ISIS.

[33] And those things have all not necessarily played well in a conservative state like Nebraska.

[34] Senator Chambers is known for wielding this outsized power despite frequently being in an ideological minority.

[35] I own you.

[36] You are my legislature.

[37] I feel like a Duke or an Earl or whoever is in charge of a fiefdom.

[38] This is a legislature dominated by conservatives, but his filibusters, his threats of filibus.

[39] and just his knowledge of the rules and regulations of the Nebraska legislature make him a real force.

[40] What will you do if the bill goes back to the committee?

[41] You'll wind up making all this noise like the mountain, and then it will bring forth a miles.

[42] Well, Nebraska is a very backward state, very racist, so I decided that the rich people don't need my help, the strong, powerful people don't need my help.

[43] but the least, the last, the lost, the friendless, the voiceless, those at the margins and outside are the ones who need a strong voice.

[44] I believe unshakably that there is an intrinsic dignity that every human being possesses no matter how far he or she may have fallen.

[45] And when that dignity is attacked and there's something I can do to alleviate it, that's what I will do.

[46] I don't care who the person is.

[47] Senator, the reason we're talking to you today is because we're interested in a particular piece of legislation that you introduced early on in your career that feels very much in keeping with your belief about those who are marginalized, those who are disenfranchised.

[48] Yes.

[49] And that's the death penalty.

[50] Yes.

[51] Tell me about the first time you introduced legislation trying to end the death penalty in Nebraska.

[52] In 1973.

[53] So you had just been elected.

[54] Yep.

[55] And what happened?

[56] It didn't go anywhere.

[57] I don't think it even got out of committee.

[58] It doesn't pass, but he keeps bringing it up.

[59] He keeps introducing it in 1979.

[60] In 1979, well, the moon was in its seventh house, and Jupiter aligned with Mars, but there was no peace guiding the planet.

[61] No, there was a confluence of events and circumstances that allowed me to get 26 votes.

[62] I cannot tell you what made that session different from all the ones.

[63] before.

[64] It happened, and I was glad.

[65] Okay.

[66] A bill that would repeal the death penalty passes.

[67] Nebraska lawmakers passed that bill.

[68] But a repellican governor vetoed it.

[69] In the following session, I offered a repealer again.

[70] Well, Senator Chambers is undeterred, but the thing is, for the first many years of his activism on this, there had been no executions in Nebraska.

[71] But then come the 1990s, and that starts to change.

[72] There's this movement toward actually carrying out the executions of people on death row.

[73] The first man is called to die is Harold Lamont O .D., a black man who had been convicted of killing a woman.

[74] And it's kind of an event.

[75] It's scheduled to happen at midnight.

[76] Nebraska plans to use the electric chair, and people show up in pretty large numbers.

[77] Some of them very happy that Nebraska is going to carry out executions again.

[78] They had racist.

[79] statements, racist signs, they shouted the N -word, showing the barbarism of white people in Nebraska.

[80] There's even the photo of this one sign someone had that night that says, Nebraska State Penn, first annual barbecue.

[81] Why is there a barbecue there?

[82] Well, it's a reference to the electric chair.

[83] Oh, wow.

[84] It takes two switches to activate the chair.

[85] One, just five feet in front of the prisoner, and the other behind a door, about five feet behind the chair.

[86] Death in the chair is not instantaneous nor pleasant and sterile.

[87] It usually takes a couple of minutes before the 2 ,500 volts do the job and leaves a frightening impression on anyone who's witnessed an execution.

[88] So Mr. Odie is executed in September 1994.

[89] It's Nebraska's first execution in 35 years.

[90] But Senator Chambers keeps fighting and just a couple years later there's another execution scheduled, this time a man named John Jubert.

[91] That number Right.

[92] Senator Chambers actually goes to the prison in his final hours before Mr. Juberk goes to the electric chair.

[93] And I talked to him.

[94] He was very young.

[95] He was about five feet, maybe not much taller than that.

[96] But at that time, he had grown a beard.

[97] He had been in prison for some time.

[98] The deputy warden was the one cutting off his hair, and they had to shave his head so that the electricity would make a good contact.

[99] the deputy warden was nervous because he knows I'm a barber.

[100] They had this metal container with warm water, and he had a safety razor.

[101] I said, look, here's what you do.

[102] You take this towel, and you put it in the water, and you wring it out almost dry, and you place it on his head and hold it there, and it will soften the hair.

[103] I showed him which blade of the clippers to use to cut the hair as close to the scalp as possible.

[104] I said, man, I'll do it myself.

[105] He said, no, we can't have a civilian or anybody involved.

[106] I said, then I'll tell you what to do.

[107] Now, after you have softened his hair, you take this, they had the foam in the container, you spread it on his scalp, and then you massage it in.

[108] You take the rag, wipe that off, put the towel on warm again, then you put the spray on, then you carefully move the blade, always holding it flush.

[109] Wait, I just want to be clear that you, so you helped this deputy warden prepare this man for death, which I imagine felt very complicated for you.

[110] Because I was thinking about what the man himself was going through.

[111] They were going to cut his hair.

[112] They were going to shave him.

[113] They didn't know what they were doing.

[114] And I was not going to let him go there looking like his hair had been pulled out by a pair of pliers.

[115] They wouldn't have his head shaved in the way it had to be to do the horrible thing they were going to do.

[116] Well, in the years that follow, Senator Chambers keeps trying to outlaw the death penalty, he keeps introducing these bills, and they keep failing over and over.

[117] But some things are changing.

[118] The Nebraska Supreme Court outlaws the electric chair.

[119] And then in other states, there are people on death row who are exonerated, raising questions about whether innocent people are being killed.

[120] And amid this national debate, Nebraska's executions stopped for many years.

[121] And then, in 2015, Senator Chambers introduces yet another bill to outlaw the death penalty.

[122] But this time, it gets traction.

[123] When you say that he's getting traction, what exactly do you mean?

[124] Who's joining him this time?

[125] Well, it's a mix of lawmakers.

[126] It's liberals who oppose the death penalty on moral grounds.

[127] At the end of day, as I've told people, you can't nuance this decision.

[128] It's people who oppose the death penalty on religious grounds.

[129] Nebraska's believe that all life is given to them by their creator and that he will call us home.

[130] And I think this is a pretty good plan.

[131] It's also small government conservatives, some of them who question the cost and the implementation of this policy.

[132] Over the last decade, the murder rate in non -death penalty states has remained consistently lower than the rate in states with the death penalty.

[133] So it sounds like all these politically diverse.

[134] figures in the legislature are behind this effort in 2015 to ban the death penalty.

[135] So at this point, who is opposed to it?

[136] Well, certainly some conservatives in the legislature, certainly many Nebraska, but most significantly, it's the new governor, Pete Ricketts, a Republican, a Roman Catholic who took office in early 2015.

[137] But the fact of the matter is, we live in a dangerous society.

[138] We have dangerous criminals.

[139] And we need to have the appropriate tools for law enforcement to be able to protect us.

[140] And that's why so many Nebraskaans I talk with are in favor of the death penalty.

[141] Not long after Governor Ricketts takes office, Senator Chambers has again put forward a bill.

[142] And this time, it's making its way through the system and gaining supporters, and it comes up for a final vote, and it passes 32 to 15.

[143] But that's not the end of it.

[144] Governor Ricketts is a veto, and everyone knows he's going to use it, and he does.

[145] So that sets up a very time.

[146] intense veto override vote.

[147] No one's quite sure how it's going to go.

[148] There were senators who were leaving the floor, not to go talk to the people outside, but I guess to commune with whatever they needed to commune with to stay strong.

[149] So there was a whole lot of activity.

[150] It was feverish, if you want to describe it with one word.

[151] Then when the vote came, it was by a roll call.

[152] When we had 29 votes, the last senator, voting yes voted yes to override please let's have we had exactly 30 votes to override a historic vote ends with emotion overflowing from onlookers at the nebraska state capital there was a song that might describe it's got the whole world shaken something must be going on live at six the death penalty is abolished in Nebraska today state senators voted 3019 to override the governor's veto now a big death penalty surprise.

[153] In the wake of so much news about crime and punishment in America, the Nebraska legislature has just voted to ban capital punishment, the first solidly red state to do so in four decades.

[154] The death penalty is now illegal in Nebraska.

[155] And this was a pivotal day in the history of the state, and it was seen for a moment as a pivotal day in the history of the country.

[156] But this wasn't over.

[157] Nebraska law allows a referendum.

[158] If you get enough signatures, you can take something passed by the legislature and put it to a statewide vote.

[159] And almost immediately, supporters of the death penalty in Nebraska rally, they are well organized, and they begin that petition drive.

[160] We live in a dangerous world.