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Death penalty results unlikely to gain footing
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Despite Democrats gaining a majority in the Wisconsin Senate, Sen. Alan Lasee, R-De Pere, said Thursday night he still plans to introduce legislation during the next legislative session that would re-enact the death penalty in Wisconsin.
Like most officials, he's not expecting the proposal to go very far.
"I'm obligated to introduce a bill," said Lasee, who has consistently made the death penalty a campaign issue and authored Tuesday's advisory referendum in February 2005.
With all of the state's precincts reporting, 55.5 percent of voters supported the measure to re-enact the death penalty "for cases involving a person who is convicted of multiple first-degree intentional homicides, if the homicides are vicious and the convictions are supported by DNA evidence."
"I knew all along the majority of Wisconsin voters approved [the death penalty] in some cases," said Lasee, who noted he was not surprised by the results. "Hopefully it tells legislators this is something we need to work on."
Gov. Jim Doyle and other state Democrats have expressed little interest since the election to compromise their stance on the death penalty.
"Gov. Doyle has made it clear that the highest punishment should be life in prison," Doyle spokesperson Matt Canter said.
And now that Democrats control the state Senate with an 18-15 majority, "there seems to be no need to take measures to prevent it," Canter said.
According to Sen. Fred Risser, D-Madison — who was elected Senate president Thursday — the death penalty is a "perennial issue" because it has been contested since its abolition 153 years ago.
He said the referendum was not a "meaningful" representation of Wisconsin voters because "people who haven't thought about it at all vote yes" due to the wording.
Risser added that the DNA clause would not be in a state bill and that it was placed on the ballot to "get a few extra votes."
Risser said he does not consider the death penalty to be a partisan issue, but noted: "In Dane County, we had very different views than the rest of the state."
In Dane County, 32.8 percent of voters supported the death penalty, while 67.2 percent voted against the measure.
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Of course there will be no reinstatement of the death penalty in Wisconsin. Sen Risser says the voters are stupid and don’t knopw what they are voting for. Gov. Doyle would veto any bill for a death penalty becuase he feels the harshest punishment for murder should be life in prison. It looks as though we, the people, are not capable of steering our own course and have to rely on those, who work for us, to tell us we don’t know what we want and, even if we did, a princeling in Madison, would not let you have it.