Repeal News

NEW MEXICO COALITION TO REPEAL THE DEATH PENALTY APPLAUDS GOVERNOR RICHARDSON AS HE SIGNS HB 285 TO REPEAL THE DEATH PENALTY IN NEW MEXICO

March 18, 2009 - Albuquerque, NM – NM Repeal congratulates our Governor Bill Richardson and the New Mexico State Legislature for their leadership in repealing capital punishment in New Mexico. The strong vote in the New Mexico legislature reflects broad consensus that the death penalty has failed the people of New Mexico, who have come to know that it risks executing the innocent, is unfairly applied, fails victims’ families and law enforcement and wastes scarce taxpayer dollars.

By repealing the death penalty, New Mexico has chosen to focus its energies and resources where they should be focused: on providing tangible assistance to the families of murder victims. The additional measures making their way through the Legislature at this moment will enable New Mexico to use the savings gained from ending the death penalty to provide a reparation award to children of murder victims, provide services and programs to murder victims’ families, and create a murder victim family services fund.

Another measure requires employers to provide paid or unpaid leave to crime victims to attend judicial proceedings.  NM Repeal applauds this action in behalf of survivors of homicide in New Mexico.

In this time of fiscal crisis, it is more important than ever to make smart choices when it comes to meeting the needs of our citizens.  Replacing the death penalty marked the end of a costly, ineffective aspect of New Mexico’s criminal justice system.  With it went the false promise that executions would bring healing to survivors of homicide victims.  Now in New Mexico the priority will be on assisting murder victims’ families as opposed to pursuing the executions of a handful of individuals.  Perpetrators will be sentenced to life imprisonment without possibility of parole. 

New Mexico’s decision to end capital punishment brings to 15 the number of states that no longer carry out executions.  Other states have put executions on hold or have commissioned studies.  These actions come amidst a growing chorus of concern about the death penalty across the country.  Since 2000 there has been a dramatic decrease in all aspects of death penalty use.  And public opinion has shifted away from support for capital punishment. These developments, which are the backdrop against which New Jersey and New York, and now New Mexico, abandoned the death penalty, are evidence that Americans are moving away from capital punishment.