Why? What's changed between then and now?

Lots. The tide is turning against using capital punishment all across the country.

Death sentences have dropped by 60% since 1999. The 42 executions recorded in 2007 are the fewest since 1994. Forty states had no executions at all last year.

The American Bar Association declared its support for a nationwide moratorium on executions due to overwhelming problems in state death penalty systems.

Then, in October, the New York Supreme Court took the last person off of their death row. Their death penalty was declared unconstitutional in 2004 and successive legislatures have declined to reinstate it.

Culminating the growing trend in 2007 to halt executions, New Jersey abolished the death penalty altogether in December. They cited the risk of executing innocent people, the high costs of capital punishment, its arbitrary and discriminatory use, and its tendency to prolong the suffering of victims' family members.

The problems that plagued New Jersey's death penalty system continue to bedevil every state with death penalty statutes, including Nebraska.

Last week, the Nebraska Legislature's Judiciary Committee held a hearing on LB 1063, which would replace the death penalty with life in prison without parole.

Of the nearly 200 people in attendance, no one spoke out in favor of the death penalty.

Among those testifying in support of LB 1063 were two of the many murder victim family members in Nebraska who publicly oppose the death penalty.

They told the legislators, "killing another human being is not healing" and "brings no honor to our loved ones."

Another witness, Curtis McCarty, who spent 19 years on Oklahoma's death row before being exonerated by DNA evidence, told the committee, "I am here to demonstrate that we human beings are fallible, and therefore our judiciary is fallible. We make mistakes. We do put innocent people in jail and we put them on death row."

McCarty is one of some 126 death row inmates freed since the 1990s for murders they did not commit.

In a letter to the hearing, Captain Jim Davidsaver, a 21-year veteran of the Lincoln Police Department writing on his own behalf, said the death penalty is a "model of inefficiency." It does not deter crime, and it's much more expensive to taxpayers than life in prison without parole.

In Nebraska, more than 74% of murder cases in which the prosecution seeks the death penalty are changed to a life sentence, meaning that the costs of the death penalty trials are added to the costs of life in prison without parole. As Captain Davidsaver said, in effect, Nebraska's system is one of life without parole, just more expensive because of death penalty trials.

Even Nebraska Solicitor General J. Kirk Brown, a death penalty supporter, volunteered during a recent public forum that the costs of the death penalty system are "staggering." According to recent studies, the costs range from $250 million for each execution in California to 1.7 times more than life in prison without parole in Kansas.

Other new voices testifying in support of ending the death penalty included former Nebraska Supreme Court Chief Justice David Lanphier and former Douglas County Deputy Attorney Brent Bloom. In written remarks, the former Chief Justice said "Nebraska deserves better than the expensive, broken system we currently have."

In Nebraska and elsewhere, citizens and legislators alike are coming to recognize that the death penalty is unfairly applied, costly, and ineffective in deterring violence.

In 2008, Nebraska can be the next state to do the commonsensical, practical, and, yes, morally right thing to do, end the death penalty.

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