Kate Sullivan Explains Why She Voted Against Death Penalty

Nebraska State Senator, Kate Sullivan paid a visit to the residents of The Willows Assisted Living in Neligh on Wednesday.

The Willows Administrator, Jayne Prince, said she was honored to have Sullivan take the opportunity to visit with the residents.

After lunch, Sullivan spoke about the changes made in property taxes this past legislative session.  

"We have put additional dollars into the property tax credit fund. It is now, I think, $240 million dollars in that fund. That goes out as a credit on the property tax statements," Sullivan said.

She also talked about her successes at the chair of the education committee.

"We were able to pass a balanced budget which provided almost a billion dollars of state dollars to go our schools," she said. "One of the things we will be working on intensely this summer is to look at how we fund our schools and trying to come up with a different mechanism, so we don't put as much pressure on property taxes."

On May 27, Sullivan was one of 30 Nebraska senators who voted to override Gov. Pete Ricketts' veto of their vote to repeal the death penalty. Nebraska is the first Republican-controlled state to repeal the death penalty since North Dakota in 1973.

She said it was a heart-wrenching decision to make, but she felt that "it didn't solve problems that we were wanting to have resolution to because we haven't been able to execute those on death row. No execution in over 20 years." 

Sullivan added, "You can say we have an imperfect judicial system, but it's what we have. . . . And we've been having problems, as we all know with having the drug available to carry out the execution. So I just decided that there were so many pitfalls and things standing in the way. It was better to repeal and get on with putting those people in prison for life. And then we can maybe focus our attention on making sure fewer people commit these heinous crimes."