A Republican lawmaker who wants to reinstate the death penalty in Wisconsin after 152 years without it said at a hearing Thursday the public should be able to vote on whether capital punishment is necessary for the most heinous crimes.
'Why not let the citizens of Wisconsin have a voice as to whether or not they think this would be appropriate here'? said state Sen. Alan Lasee, R-De Pere.
Lasee cited several gruesome murders from past decades and said the death penalty is needed to have the punishment fit the crime.
'The Bible says something about an eye for an eye,' Lasee said. 'I think that goes a long way.'
State Sen. Fred Risser, D-Madison, questioned the need for a referendum and said elected representatives should already know what their constituents want.
'You vote your constituency,' he said. 'I'll vote mine.'
Risser also brought up a letter from the Dane County district attorney saying the office was under-funded and not equipped to handle death penalty cases.
Angie Hougas, a member of the board of directors for Amnesty International USA, said the death penalty is 'a cruel and degrading treatment of human beings because it perpetuates a cycle of violence.'
She said executions made possible by the death penalty do not bring closure to families who have been victims of gruesome crimes.
Other groups in opposition, including UW-Madison's Wisconsin Innocence Project, focus on false convictions of death row inmates.
The project is a law-school-run program consisting of 15-20 students at a time, headed by professors John Pray and Keith Findley. 'On the national level, there have been 163 DNA exonerations since the advent of DNA testing 15 years ago, along with hundreds of others due to other types of evidence,' Pray said.
Pray said he is also concerned about the uneven distribution of the death penalty.
'Who your lawyer was, how much money you have, where you live, your race, the race of the victim'these have major effects on the administration of the death penalty,' Pray said.
Those who oppose the death penalty also call attention to the high financial costs the death penalty incurs, regardless of whether it is used or not.
Professor John McAdams of Marquette University said he supports the death penalty. 'We as a society have a moral obligation to reinstate the death penalty,' McAdams said.
McAdams said he believes the lists of people who have been exonerated from death row have been radically overstated and said the death penalty has been proven to deter crime. In response to elevated costs, McAdams said he believes the high security 'Supermax' incarceration necessary for extreme offenders is just as expensive, and that 'high costs come from cases that are strung out in appeals by death penalty opponents.'
