Method
The sole method of execution in Nebraska is lethal injection.
Historically, hanging was the method Nebraska used up to the execution of Albert Prince. In 1913 after the execution of Albert Prince, a new law was passed requiring electric chair as the method of execution and outlawed hanging. Allison Cole was the first person executed by the electric chair in Nebraska. As of 2007, the electric chair was required as the method of execution. The most notorious electrocution ever carried out in the state of Nebraska is arguably that of murderer Charles Starkweather, whose 1958 killing spree with his teenage girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate cemented his reputation as one of America's most bloodthirsty spree killers to ever be brought to justice.
On February 8, 2008, the Nebraska Supreme Court declared in State v. Mata that electrocution constitutes "cruel and unusual punishment" under the Nebraska Constitution, effectively staying all death sentences in Nebraska. The state legislature approved the bill to change its method of execution to lethal injection; Gov. Dave Heineman signed the bill on May 28, 2009. Nebraska was the last state to adopt lethal injection as execution method.
Read more about this topic: Capital Punishment In Nebraska
Famous quotes containing the word method:
“Steady labor with the hands, which engrosses the attention also, is unquestionably the best method of removing palaver and sentimentality out of one’s style, both of speaking and writing.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Too poor for a bribe, and too proud to importune,
He had not the method of making a fortune.”
—Thomas Gray (1716–1771)
“... [a] girl one day flared out and told the principal “the only mission opening before a girl in his school was to marry one of those candidates [for the ministry].” He said he didn’t know but it was. And when at last that same girl announced her desire and intention to go to college it was received with about the same incredulity and dismay as if a brass button on one of those candidate’s coats had propounded a new method for squaring the circle or trisecting the arc.”
—Anna Julia Cooper (1859–1964)