Bill Text: MI HR0148 | 2019-2020 | 100th Legislature | Introduced
Bill Title: A resolution to oppose the resumption of capital punishment by the federal government and urge Attorney General Barr and the U.S. Department of Justice to immediately reverse its decision to resume executions.
Spectrum: Partisan Bill (Democrat 37-0)
Status: (Introduced - Dead) 2019-09-03 - Referred To Committee On Judiciary [HR0148 Detail]
Download: Michigan-2019-HR0148-Introduced.html
house resolution no.148
Reps. LaGrand, Hammoud, Tyrone Carter, Hoadley, Camilleri, Anthony, Cynthia Johnson, Garza, Peterson, Brenda Carter, Kennedy, Coleman, Tate, Elder, Haadsma, Hertel, Sneller, Wittenberg, Koleszar, Manoogian, Rabhi, Pohutsky, Warren, Lasinski, Sowerby, Hood, Bolden, Pagan, Ellison, Garrett, Neeley, Gay-Dagnogo, Yancey, Kuppa and Jones offered the following resolution:
Whereas, The federal government has only carried out three death sentences since capital punishment was reinstated in 1988, the most recent of which took place in 2003. Federal executions have not taken place in recent years, in part, because of difficulty obtaining sodium thiopental, one of three drugs used in federal executions; and
Whereas, The federal government will be resuming capital punishment, scheduling five executions beginning in December 2019. On July 25, 2019, Attorney General William Barr directed the Federal Bureau of Prisons to adopt a proposed Addendum to the Federal Execution Protocol, replacing the three-drug procedure previously used in federal executions with a single drug, pentobarbital; and
Whereas, The death penalty is cruel and barbaric and has no place in modern society. The federal government should not be taking steps to reinstate this unwise, unequal, and unjust practice; and
Whereas, The death penalty has never been convincingly shown to deter people from committing serious crimes. States without the death penalty have experienced similar falling rates of violent crime as states with the death penalty in recent decades, and states have abolished the death penalty without seeing a rise in violent crime; and
Whereas, Capital punishment is more expensive than alternative sentences such as life in prison. Trials take longer and are more expensive when the death penalty is at issue; the appeals process is lengthier; and there are significant costs associated with security and prisoner housing for death penalty cases that are not present in non-death penalty cases. Numerous states have found the true cost of an execution to be higher than that of a life sentence; and
Whereas, The death penalty is applied in a fundamentally unequal way. An enormous body of research shows that racial, ethnic, and religious minorities are more likely to receive death sentences, as are the poor and people with developmental disabilities and mental illness; and
Whereas, The permanence of capital punishment robs people of the ability to prove their innocence. Executions of wrongfully convicted individuals cannot be undone even upon the discovery of new evidence and scientific methodologies or when better analysis comes to light. The growing number of exonerations nationwide suggests at least some portion of the people who could be executed at the federal level are innocent; and
Whereas, Many Michiganders and Americans follow faith traditions which clearly reject the use of the death penalty in concept or in practice because it violates important doctrines related to fairness, mercy, and the value of human life; and
Whereas, Moral opposition to capital punishment is part of Michigan's identity, having been the first English-speaking jurisdiction in the world to pass legislation against the death penalty in 1846. The state has long recognized that a society that sanctions executions diminishes the value of life, particularly when other means of punishment are as effective, less costly, and fairer. This moral clarity is best articulated by Sojourner Truth, speaking in opposition to a proposal to reinstate the death penalty:
It shocked me worse than slavery. I've heard that you are going to have hanging again in this state...Where is the man or woman who can sanction such a thing as that? We are the makers of murderers if we do it.
; and
Whereas, The framers of Michigan's 1963 constitution felt so strongly in their opposition to capital punishment that they enshrined it in Article IV, Section 46 of the state constitution, providing that "No law shall be enacted providing for the penalty of death."; now, therefore, be it
Resolved by the House of Representatives, That we oppose the resumption of capital punishment by the federal government and urge Attorney General Barr and the U.S. Department of Justice to immediately reverse its decision to resume executions; and be it further
Resolved, That copies of this resolution be transmitted to the President of the United States, the Attorney General of the United States, and the members of the Michigan congressional delegation.
