Nebraska Supreme Court rejects death row inmate’s appeal News
CACorrections (California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Nebraska Supreme Court rejects death row inmate’s appeal

The Nebraska Supreme Court on Friday rejected a death row inmate’s argument that the reinstatement of the death penalty in Nebraska violated his constitutional rights.

In May 2015 the Nebraska legislature enacted LB 268, a law that aimed to repeal the death penalty in Nebraska and change death penalty sentences into life imprisonment sentences.

LB 268 was set to go into effect on August 30, 2015, but on August 26, 2015, Nebraska residents signed a referendum petition to repeal it. As a result, LB 268 was repealed in November 2016.

Marco Torres, sentenced to death in 2009 for two murders, filed a post-conviction motion in a Nebraska district court in hopes to avoid the death penalty. Torres argued that the reinstatement of the capital punishment in Nebraska violated his due process rights (among other constitutional rights) since LB 268 had converted his death penalty sentence into a life imprisonment sentence and the repeal of LB 268 reimposed the capital punishment on him without the benefit of a hearing.

The district court rejected Torres’ motion and, last Friday, the Nebraska Supreme Court agreed with the district court’s decision. The Nebraska Supreme Court decided that there was no violation of Torres’ constitutional rights because LB 268 was effectively suspended on August 26, 2015, upon signature of the referendum and never went into effect; therefore, Torres’ death penalty sentence never changed into a life imprisonment sentence.

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