{"id":192523,"date":"2016-10-03T22:25:35","date_gmt":"2016-10-04T04:25:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=192523"},"modified":"2016-10-04T08:57:36","modified_gmt":"2016-10-04T14:57:36","slug":"death-penalty-bill-clears-committee-heads-to-house-floor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2016\/10\/death-penalty-bill-clears-committee-heads-to-house-floor\/","title":{"rendered":"Death penalty bill clears committee, heads to House floor"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_192530\"  class=\"wp-caption module image alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 771px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-192530\" src=\"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Youngblood-Monica-771x514.jpg\" alt=\"Monica Youngblood\" width=\"771\" height=\"514\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Youngblood-Monica-771x514.jpg 771w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Youngblood-Monica-336x224.jpg 336w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Youngblood-Monica-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Youngblood-Monica-1170x780.jpg 1170w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Youngblood-Monica.jpg 1500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 771px) 100vw, 771px\" \/><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Luis S\u00e1nchez Saturno \/ The Santa Fe New Mexican<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rep. Monica Youngblood, R-Albuquerque, presents a bill to reinstate the death penalty to the House Appropriations and Finance Committee on Monday.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Republican lawmakers took another step <span class=\"aBn\" data-term=\"goog_267761471\"><span class=\"aQJ\">Monday<\/span><\/span> night towards reinstating the death penalty in New Mexico.<\/p>\n<p>Members of the House Finance and Appropriations Committee voted 8-6 along party lines to send the capital punishment legislation to a vote of the full 70-member House of Representatives.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/nmlegis.gov\/Legislation\/Legislation?chamber=H&amp;legType=B&amp;legNo=7&amp;year=16s\" target=\"_blank\">House Bill 7<\/a> would allow the death penalty in cases involving the murder of a child, a police officer or a corrections officer. The bill largely mirrors a capital punishment statute legislators repealed in 2009.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"module align-left half type-aside\">\n<h3>About this article<\/h3>\n<p>This article comes from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.santafenewmexican.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">The Santa Fe New Mexican<\/a>. NMPolitics.net is paying for the rights to publish articles about the 2016 special legislative session from the newspaper. Help us cover the cost by\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/donate\/\" target=\"_blank\">making a donation to NMPolitics.net<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<p>As lawmakers wrangled with the bill and its potential costs on Monday, some committee members questioned the legislation\u2019s clarity and whether it could withstand court challenges.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt doesn\u2019t feel like it was well thought out to me,\u201d said Rep. Doreen Gallegos, D-Las Cruces.<\/p>\n<p>The cosponsor, Rep. Monica Youngblood,\u00a0R-Albuquerque, offered a dozen changes <span class=\"aBn\" data-term=\"goog_267761472\"><span class=\"aQJ\">Monday<\/span><\/span> night in response to criticism that the bill contained outdated language and other provisions that might be unconstitutional.<\/p>\n<p>For example, the amendment replaced the term \u201cmentally retarded,\u201d with \u201cintellectual disability.\u201d But advocates for people with disabilities said <span class=\"aBn\" data-term=\"goog_267761473\"><span class=\"aQJ\">Monday<\/span><\/span> the legislation still might not stand up in court.<\/p>\n<p>Youngblood\u2019s bill originally said inmates would be considered \u201cretarded\u201d if they have an IQ below 70. But in 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court prohibited using a specific IQ number to determine whether an inmate can be executed and required an individualized evaluation instead.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe courts have made clear you have to dig a bit deeper,\u201d said Jim Jackson, chief executive officer\u00a0of Disability Rights New Mexico.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>His organization does not have a position on the death penalty but has raised concerns about how the proposed bill would be applied to people with disabilities. The group has argued, for example, that the bill does not have an adequate process to determine whether an inmate has a mental illness that might prohibit execution.<\/p>\n<p>Youngblood\u2019s amendment also allowed the state to change the drugs it uses in executions. Rather than specifying the state would use an \u201cultra-short-acting barbiturate in combination with a chemical paralytic agent,\u201d the amendment would only require a \u201csubstance\u201d in \u201ca quantity sufficient to cause death.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The change would allow the state to carry out an execution if the previously used drugs are no longer available. New Mexico Corrections Department procedures for execution include sodium pentothal, pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride \u2014 widely used among states with the death penalty. But some of those states have had difficulty obtaining those drugs in recent years as opponents of the death penalty have pressured manufacturers to stop selling them for use in executions.<\/p>\n<p>Youngblood also proposed changing the bill to keep the identities of executioners confidential.<\/p>\n<p>And in another change, Youngblood eliminated part of the process for determining whether a woman sentenced to death is pregnant. The bill Youngblood initially proposed with Rep. Andy Nu\u00f1ez, R-Hatch,\u00a0called for doctors accompanied by a judge to examine the woman in a court.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s like we woke up in the 1950s,\u201d said Steven Allen,\u00a0director of public policy for the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_192533\"  class=\"wp-caption module image alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 336px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-192533\" src=\"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Steinborn-Jeff-1-336x504.jpg\" alt=\"Jeff Steinborn\" width=\"336\" height=\"504\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Steinborn-Jeff-1-336x504.jpg 336w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Steinborn-Jeff-1-768x1152.jpg 768w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Steinborn-Jeff-1-771x1157.jpg 771w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Steinborn-Jeff-1.jpg 1000w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 336px) 100vw, 336px\" \/><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Luis S\u00e1nchez Saturno \/ The Santa Fe New Mexican<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rep. Jeff Steinborn, D-Las Cruces, listens while Rep. Monica Youngblood, R-Albuquerque, presents her legislation on Monday.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Allen and many Democrats in the state House have argued the Legislature should not try to craft and pass death penalty legislation during a short special session but at least wait to take up the issue during the regular 60-day session starting in January.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are discussing a bill of life or death,\u201d Rep. Jeff Steinborn, D-Las Cruces,\u00a0said during <span class=\"aBn\" data-term=\"goog_267761474\"><span class=\"aQJ\">Monday\u2019s<\/span><\/span> committee hearing. \u201cThis warrants extreme, intelligent, thorough deliberation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But Youngblood and others supporting the bill have argued that much of the measure\u2019s language was tried and tested before the death penalty was repealed in 2009.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is a statute that worked in New Mexico previously,\u201d said Dianna Luce,\u00a0district attorney of Lea,\u00a0Chaves\u00a0and Eddy counties. Luce said designing a totally new law would create \u201cunknowns\u201d in future appeals.<\/p>\n<p>Typically concerned with the costs of legislation, the House Appropriations and Finance Committee spent much of its hearing grappling with differing calculations of the cost of reinstating capital punishment for a limited number of cases.<\/p>\n<p>Attorneys from the Law Office of the Public Defender said death penalty cases would strain defense lawyers and prosecutors alike while sapping even more resources from the state\u2019s courts. But prosecutors argued murder cases are already labor and resource intensive, suggesting the additional costs of death penalty cases would be insubstantial.<\/p>\n<p>Legislative staffers wrote in a financial analysis that the bill would cost at least $2 million a year within the next three years. But Youngblood said the analysis inflated the costs based on a miscalculation of the number of cases in which the bill might apply. New Mexico used the death penalty sparingly when it was last in place, executing one man between 1977 and 2009.<\/p>\n<p>The death penalty is one of three crime bills Republican Gov. Susana Martinez\u00a0added to the agenda of a special legislative session initially intended to address the state\u2019s budget deficit.<\/p>\n<p>It could pass the Republican-controlled House on a party-line vote, but positions on the death penalty have not always been predictable. Three sitting House Republicans voted to repeal the death penalty seven years ago.<\/p>\n<p>Unclear, too, is whether the state Senate will even consider the bill.<\/p>\n<p>The Senate, where Democrats are the majority, <a href=\"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2016\/10\/senate-passes-bills-to-address-budget-shortfall-then-goes-home\/\" target=\"_blank\">adjourned <span class=\"aBn\" data-term=\"goog_267761475\"><span class=\"aQJ\">Friday<\/span><\/span><\/a> after passing several budget bills on the special session\u2019s first day, effectively snubbing the governor\u2019s tough-on-crime agenda.<\/p>\n<p>Senators may have to return to Santa Fe later this week, however, to at least vote on changes to budget bills made by the House.<\/p>\n<p><em>Contact Andrew Oxford at 505-986-3093 or <a href=\"mailto:aoxford@sfnewmexican.com\" target=\"_blank\">aoxford@sfnewmexican.com<\/a>. Follow him on Twitter at <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/@andrewboxford\" target=\"_blank\">@andrewboxford<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Members of the House Finance and Appropriations Committee voted 8-6 along party lines to send the capital punishment legislation to a vote of the full 70-member House of Representatives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":192530,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[3305,142,203,107],"class_list":["post-192523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-2016-special-session","tag-crime","tag-law-enforcement","tag-roundhouse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192523\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/192530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}